Journey's End
by scotchplaid
Summary: B&W AU. A continuation of The Journey That Mattered, a horse opera set in Dakota Territory in the 1880s. In addition to cowboys and six-shooters and a saloon called the Rusty Spur, this second part includes more trials and trouble for the pair.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N #1: If you've read the first part, you know what you're in for - improbable coincidences, historical anachronisms . . . it's a historical melodrama written on the fly (sort of). **

**A/N #2: Possibly the worst day of Myka's life. It will get better for her but not for awhile.**

**A/N #3: If any of you who read my stuff have ideas for B&W fanfics or want to co-write a fic, let me know. **

She never slept this late. She didn't need to squint at the clock on Helena's dresser to know how late, she could tell from the angle of the sunlight streaming through the windows. She also didn't need to look at the other side of the bed to know that Helena hadn't come home last night. Maybe it had been as Helena had said, she was this very minute elbow-deep in invoices and receipts and account books. But she didn't need to visit Helena's office at the Spur to know that Helena wasn't there. She had only to remember the careful set to Helena's face, the too deliberate way Helena had held her gaze, as if her story about missing supplies was so flimsy, so hastily constructed that the least wobble in its delivery would bring it crashing down.

Putting on her dress, her fingers stiffening in the cold, Myka hoped that her father would still be asleep. She didn't want to add another lie to the day, which, despite the sun shining into the room, seemed hazy and indistinct, as though a fog had, somehow, rolled in from the prairie. Grimly she buttoned the last buttons and picked up her coat where she had draped it over one of the trunks that Helena had brought back from New York. Trunks that held books and other gifts whose purposes and properties Myka couldn't begin to imagine and, today, didn't want to imagine. It was so typical of Helena to lavish on her the things she didn't need while withholding from her the one thing she did want. Myka had known it wouldn't be easy to win Helena's trust; she had relied on herself for too long under circumstances, Myka knew, that punished rather than rewarded confidence placed in others. But Myka had hoped that their relationship was sufficiently different, that she was sufficiently different, for Helena to make the attempt. Even though Helena had discouraged her from coming to the house, Myka had crept in through the back door as she normally did, unable to stop herself from hoping that Helena might be waiting for her, ready to tell her the truth about what was troubling her. In the end, the only proof of Helena's trust was that she hadn't bothered to lock the kitchen door.

As Myka entered the kitchen, Leena was flinging open the door, racing into the room, her coat half-fastened and her scarf dragging behind on her the floor. Breathlessly she said, "I started to go to the _Journal_, but I turned around, thinking you might be here, waiting for her."

It wasn't the gust of cold air following Leena into the kitchen that caused Myka to clutch her own coat tighter to her. She had never before seen Leena look less than composed, but Leena's skin was ashen with more than cold, and the dark eyes blinking at Myka were too stunned to focus on her. For no more time than it took to draw in a single unsteady breath, Myka felt the fog that had seemed to obscure the sun and press against the windows enter her, and she knew then that it wasn't fog but fear, a fear that had had its start when she opened her eyes and realized that Helena wasn't next to her. But the breath taken, she straightened her shoulders underneath her coat and bit down on the inside of her bottom lip to prevent it from trembling. Compartments and file drawers that hadn't needed to be opened in weeks were yawning wide in her mind, and she was already busy stuffing her fear and questions in them. She could sort through all of it later.

"Tell me what happened to her." Myka was going to sit Leena down at the table, but Leena was grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the door.

"She came in with the sheriff, and they're at the jail." Leena hesitated, reluctant to say the next. "She was in handcuffs."

"Let's not think the worst," Myka said automatically, recognizing that it wasn't as difficult as it should have been to picture Helena in handcuffs next to the sheriff. At least she was alive and, it appeared, unhurt. Myka tried to concentrate on that. She shouldn't speculate – about anything – until she had more facts. "We'll ask Sheriff Lattimer if we can see Helena." Now she was the one leading, taking Leena by the hand through the yard and to the street. Most of Sweetwater was in church, but the few who weren't shifting in the unforgiving pews and listening to the unforgiving admonitions that were Pastor Wallace's sermons were congregating in front of the jail.

Myka had learned to make her way through a group of men with a flurry of apologies and a grateful acceptance of the doffing of their hats and the offering of their assistance. The more she would shrink into herself, the more they would expand, crooking their arms so that she could rest her hand on them and commenting with authority, as though the sun and wind and clouds had consulted with them, on the weather. But this morning, Myka had no patience for the social dance, moving against the men with an urgency that she didn't bother to excuse. Locking her arm around Leena's waist, she nudged and bumped through the small crowd until she was at the door, pounding on it.

"Pete," she shouted, then hastily amending it to "Sheriff Lattimer" because that lesson, the one she had learned with Sam, was burned too deep to ignore, "let me in."

The door opened, and Myka and Leena, arms still around each other's waist, squeezed themselves through the doorway into the room. Myka looked immediately at the cell at the back of the room, and Helena was there, sitting on the cot, her back to them. It wasn't seeing her in the cell as much as it was seeing the proud, unbending line of her neck and realizing, yet again, how slender and slight she was that caused Myka to swallow hard and feel, for just an instant, a stab of panic. This was every bit as bad as Leena's frightened rush into the kitchen and her shocked, staring eyes had suggested.

"Get her out." It was quietly said, but there was an edge to Helena's words that promised the next ones would come as a shout.

"Helena, please tell me what happened." Myka tentatively approached the cell. Helena was a swan, not a lion or bear, but Myka instinctively employed a caution more suited for the latter, feeling that Helena might, at any moment, launch herself from the cot with the frenzy of a trapped animal.

"I told you to get her the hell out." Helena's voice was no louder, but it seemed to shake with the effort not to erupt into a scream.

Myka stopped, slowed not by Helena's words but by the fact that she had left the cot to stand at the back of the cell, pressing herself so closely against the bars that it seemed all too possible that she might slip between them. "Helena," she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper.

Helena bent her head against the bars before flinging it back and yelling, "Get her out of here now!" The scrape of boots against the rough planking of the floor and then Pete had hold of Myka's elbow, not ungently but firmly, and was dragging her toward the door. Leena was abjectly following when Helena said, "Not you, Leena. You can stay." There was a catch in her voice, but it didn't undercut the implicit command. Leena halted, the indecision plain in her face.

"Stay with her," Myka said, summoning a weak smile. As Pete shepherded her onto the walk, closing the door behind them, she tried to peer around it as long as she could; her last glimpse was of Helena retaking her seat on her cot, her back bowed, and Leena at the bars behind her.

Pete hadn't relaxed his grip on her elbow, almost pushing her down the snow-covered walk, away from the gawkers and loiterers in front of the jail. The men began to follow them, until Pete turned and waved them back. "Go on home," he said. "There's nothing here you need to worry about." The men milled uncertainly; a few drifted away, but a small, determined knot returned to their places in front of the jail. "I can't take you back to the _Journal_," he said apologetically to Myka.

"I know," Myka said, resolved to say the word. "She's your prisoner." She met Pete's gaze squarely. "It's MacPherson, isn't it?"

He was cold, wearing no more than a long-sleeved shirt and vest and his hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his pants. Yet he removed one hand and rubbed his chin, looking away from her. "Are you asking me as her friend, or are you asking for the _Journal_? Because if it's for the paper, I can't tell you anything; the investigation's still preliminary."

Investigation. She didn't need for him to tell her, not really. "Her friend. If this were official, my father would be the one talking to you."

"MacPherson's dead, and she says she killed him." Pete seemed to wince as he said it, as if on Myka's behalf.

"How?" Maybe her lips were already numb with cold, because she found it difficult to get the word out. It didn't matter how, it only mattered that he was dead, yet she was a newspaperman's daughter, and it was ingrained in her to ask questions. Either that, or she couldn't bear to dwell on what Pete had just said and thought to shut it out by piling more words on top of it.

"Struck him from behind with a statue. Crushed his skull." Hands back in his pockets, he rocked on his heels, trying desperately not to shiver. "That's what it looks like to me. I've got Doc Collins out there to examine him, and he'll give the final word."

"From behind?" Myka repeated. She was trying to imagine the scene, Helena raising something large and heavy and hitting MacPherson with it when his back was turned. It wasn't at all like her storming of his house after the grass fire, rifle at the ready. The two images were so disparate, as if each contained a different Helena.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Mrs. Wells, she hasn't said a word to me other than that she killed him. When I found her, she. . . she was . . . ." Pete leaned toward her, his voice quiet, although no one was close enough to them to overhear him. "She was practically naked, Myka. She was wearing his robe, and I don't think there was anything underneath it. Was she. . . did she tell you that she was. . . . Do you know if she was his mistress?" He burst out, at the same time yanking his hands from his pockets again and rubbing them together violently.

Naked? Why had Helena needed to be naked to kill MacPherson? Then Pete's question struck Myka full force, and she grabbed for a nonexistent post to keep herself from sinking to the ground. Pete steadied her and looked with frustration at the closed door and darkened windows of the shop beside them. It was the milliner's, where she had bought the fabric for the dress she had worn to the picnic, not willing to admit to herself then that she had bought it for Helena to see her in it. "We need to get you inside somewhere it's warm," he fretted.

More slamming of file drawers and, although the thumps of wood crashing into wood were entirely imaginary, her head was beginning to throb, all the same. "I'm fine. But we both need to get out of the cold." She had to answer Pete's question, cut off that line of thought before he could develop it further. It would only cause more problems for Helena, Myka instinctively knew, if everyone believed she and MacPherson were lovers. "I don't know why she was wearing his robe," she said, while explanations were banging to be let out from their file drawers, "but you know she blamed him for Joshua Donovan's death and the scheme to move the branch line to Halliday. She was his enemy, not his mistress."

"That's what I thought," he said as walked with her farther along the sidewalk. "But people are funny, they can be threatening to kill each other one minute and cozying up to each other the next. It's going to get out anyway. MacPherson's people, they saw her arriving last night and they saw her this morning, covered in his blood and wearing his robe." He turned back toward the jail, but reached a hand out to give her shoulder a comforting pat or squeeze. Something in her face must have stopped him because he let his hand drop. "I know it's a lot to take in, especially the way she acted when you came to the jail. But I don't think she knows just how much trouble she's in."

Myka only nodded, not wanting to disagree with him, but Helena knew how much trouble she was in. Her refusal to turn around and then her moving to the farthest corner of the cell, a literal underscoring of her belief that wherever, emotionally, the killing of MacPherson had taken her, it was beyond any boundaries that Myka could cross. After a last sympathetic look, Pete started walking, very quickly, back to the jail, and Myka, more slowly, made her way to the _Journal_'s office. It would be marginally warmer in her and her father's rooms, but she didn't care, the ice was inside her now, and no amount of time spent sitting next to the stove was going to melt it away.

Her father was still in his bed when she entered his room. He hadn't responded to her knock. A leg was flung out from under the quilts, the trouser covering it pushed up around the knee, and she thought it must have been an especially late night for him at the Spur if he hadn't bothered to undress. She crept out of the room and put more kindling in the stove. Not wanting to let herself think, she began preparing lunch since it was long past any breakfast hour. The coffee made, the bread sliced, the pitiful leftovers set out, and they were pitiful in their wizened, burned state, Myka sat at the table, absently chewing a slice of bread. Usually the smell of food or coffee or both would rouse her father, if only to complain, but he hadn't yet emerged. She was still trying very hard not to think, and her father's complaints, today, would be a welcome distraction. The images of the morning, the empty side of the bed where Helena slept, Leena's frantic face, Helena grasping the bars of her cell and yelling were intermixing with the images Pete's words had created, Helena swinging something heavy at the back of MacPherson's skull, his blood spattering her and the robe she was wearing. One part of her mind was anxious to make connections, to make sense of it all, while another part urged her to crawl under the covers of her bed and sleep for forty years. She would awaken, some modern day Rip Van Winkle, in a new century, and there would be no need to think about any of this. It would all be written down somewhere, and she could read it if she chose to or leave it, too entranced by the novelties of a new age, a new world to care anymore about what had happened in this one.

Her father started moaning, loudly, and Myka pushed her chair away from the table, more hastily than she would have done at any other time, because likely all he wanted was one of his bottles from the Spur or one of his headache remedies, which he kept in a dresser drawer and which were only alcohol, despite their labels with all the grandiose testaments to their curative powers. But he asked for neither of those, restlessly moving his limbs and complaining that he didn't feel good. Myka put her hand to his forehead, and it did feel hot. Patiently she helped him out of his clothes – at least he hadn't worn his frock coat to bed – and rearranged the quilts and pillows. He settled back discontentedly, refusing all offers of food and asking only for water. She sat with him as he drank it and put the empty cup on the dresser. Pulling the covers up to his chin, she left as he curled himself up in the center of bed and snuffled, the sound of it thick and congested and suggestive that he wasn't well.

Mrs. Grabel would be coming by tomorrow so Myka did little more than clean the dishes and put them away, throwing out only the leftovers. What needed her attention was the _Journal_. Her father was in no shape to begin readying the layout for the next edition, and given the central place that the story of MacPherson's murder would have in it, she needed to think about the placement of the other news, precious little of it that there was. Her father had all but given up visiting the town council and soliciting information from Sweetwater's businessmen; he had even fallen behind in requesting to reprint articles from other papers. If her father was too unwell tomorrow to talk to Pete, she would need to do it. Surely he would have something official for publication by then. She was at the desk, and she laid the side of her face on its surface. The wood was cold and hard, but she was tired, and she closed her eyes.

She had taken refuge in sleep when her mother had died. She had slept so late in the mornings that she had been late for school, and then she had fallen asleep during her lessons, which had caused the teacher to complain to her father, one of the few times in her life that she had ever given a teacher cause for complaint. At thirteen, she was almost finished with school, and her father, who was spending his time away from the newspaper in the city's saloons, thought she would find a better use for her time helping her aunt with Tracy and keeping up the house. But she had slept when she was supposed to be doing her chores, and her aunt, much like her brother in her general impatience with things, had surprisingly suggested that they have a doctor take a look at her. The doctor had taken her temperature and asked her to stick out her tongue, he had listened to her heart and tested her reflexes_._ Putting away his instruments in his medical bag, he had sat next to her on the bed she shared with Tracy and asked her how long it had been since their mother died. Two months, she had told him. He had nodded, and for a moment Myka feared that he was going to tell her that she had developed the same sickness that had taken her mother away, which had been long and painful, leaving her mother screaming or, what was worse to watch, trying to stifle her screams in the days before she died. "When it hurts less in here," he said, pointing to her chest, right above her heart, "that's when you'll wake up."

"But I'm already awake. I'm awake right now," she had protested.

He had only smiled and given her a candy. She didn't know what he said to her father and aunt, but her aunt stopped swatting her for sleeping when she was supposed to be beating the rugs or minding Tracy. Over time the daytime sleeping lessened, and when Myka's aunt announced some few months later, much to her brother's displeasure, that she was accepting an offer of marriage from the widowed dry goods merchant who lived down the street, it stopped altogether. She didn't have time to sleep, she was in charge of her father's house and Tracy now.

"Can't sleep, Myka," she murmured, pushing herself off the desk. Besides, what had taken up residence in her chest wasn't the weight she had felt when her mother died, heavy and soft at the same time, as if a million feather pillows were pushing down on her, but ice, infinitely lighter. It was easier to work with, if she kept thinking of it as ice, the numbness that had succeeded the fear, when Helena screamed at Pete to take her away, when Pete told her that Helena had been wearing only MacPherson's robe, when she realized what Helena had gone out to MacPherson's ranch to do. An icicle, jagged and sharp, uncomfortably lodged at her core, it wouldn't let her rest. Only children could sleep and believe their troubles would be gone when they woke.

She was in the middle of laying out the _Journal_'s next edition when the door to the office opened, and Leena quietly entered. Myka sensed her rather than heard her, perhaps because some part of her had been waiting for Leena to come to her ever since Pete had dragged her away from the jail. This was a Leena she recognized, the dark eyes steady and kind, and if there was no serenity in her face, the tension and fear that had been etched in it before had largely disappeared.

"She wanted me to tell you that she's sorry," Leena said, coming to stand beside her as Myka's hands slowed.

"About killing him? About not talking to me? About everything?" The numbness receded as the words spilled out, and as soon as she heard them, Myka regretted them. They sounded angry, even to her, and just as there was no point to sleeping her problems away, there was no point in getting angry. Anger was one of the emotions that upset her filing system, that made the things stuffed inside the drawers and compartments bang and jostle to get out; anger made it hard for her to think, and it was time to think now, to be rational, practical. When she had taken over their small household from her aunt, overwhelmed at thirteen with the care of a younger sister and a father grown rapidly too fond of drink, she had needed some place to store the fear and resentment that a few months before she might have buried in books or sleep. She wasn't sure when it was that the filing system, complete with gleaming file cabinets and compartments set in a large, almost library-like space had appeared in her mind, but she recognized what it was for, to help her establish order where it was absent. Tracy needed someone to make her breakfast and to see that she left for school on time, and their father needed someone to wake him in the morning and to send him off, complaining of his pounding head, to the paper. But for Myka to be that someone, the order had to start with her, in her. It had worked, the filing system, until Helena, who by simply being Helena had overturned all the compartments and tipped over the filing cabinets. Of course, it was because of the Helenas of the world that filing systems like Myka's existed in the first place. And hers, finally, had been righted. She would never again be so careless. "That's not being helpful," she said in apology to Leena.

"But it is being human," Leena said. "It's all right to be angry with her, Myka. I'm angry with her. It doesn't mean we can't still help her."

"The penalty for murder here in the Territory is hanging," Myka said, moving away from her toward the press. She listlessly touched it. Bessie never responded to her as it did to her father or Helena. "The sheriff said she confessed."

Obliquely Leena said, "It's my fault that she is where she is." As Myka looked at her questioningly, she shook her head and said with a wan smile, "It would take too long to explain, and you would never believe me."

Myka's smile was just as wan. "It couldn't be more unbelievable than anything else I've heard today."

"I suppose that's true," Leena ruefully admitted. "Maybe someday we'll sit down and have a chat." Approaching Myka again, she said, "About Helena's confession. There are bruises along her jaw and down her neck. She wouldn't let me look at her, but I'm sure there are other bruises as well. MacPherson beat her. She could have acted out of fear for her own life."

"Did she say that?" It didn't sound angry, but there was a challenging note to it that Myka wished she could have softened.

"No." Leena bent and peered into Bessie's workings. "I look at machines, and their levers and gears and bolts are a mystery to me. To Helena, they're only another kind of book, one as easy to read as nursery rhymes or fairy tales." Her hand tightened around one of Bessie's sturdy supports. "She wouldn't have killed him without provocation, Myka."

"Did she tell you how the sheriff found her?" Not angry or challenging but blunt, too blunt. "She was wearing only MacPherson's robe."

Leena stilled for a second, then she carefully straightened. Her gaze was just as steady, just as kind as it had been when she entered the office. "She told me she had gone out to his ranch to negotiate with him. You know what she was, Myka, what she had to negotiate with."

"And that's why it doesn't matter if he beat her." Myka spared a glance toward her father's bedroom door. He hadn't stirred in hours. "If people think she was his mistress or his whore, then she's just another thing he owned, and he had every right to treat her as he wanted. What's more, some here will suspect that she was a party to his plan to move the branch line."

"But she was the one trying to put a stop to it," Leena objected, and Myka heard her own, earlier incredulousness.

And she repeated, in essence, what Pete had said to her, all but shrugging at the vagaries of human nature. "Friends, lovers, family, they turn on each other all the time. People will think that she and MacPherson had a falling out, a lovers' quarrel, and that she turned on him in revenge." She had said it too flatly. Why couldn't she strike the right tone? "I don't mean to sound hard. I'm just trying to be realistic. Emotion won't help Helena but thinking clearly might."

Leena locked eyes with her until Myka looked away. She couldn't bear the sympathy she saw in them. "Emotion has its place, Myka." But she sighed in acknowledgment of the difficulty they faced. "I still think an argument can be made that she was acting in self-defense, but Helena, for whatever reason, isn't willing to help herself. Actually, that's why I'm here. I need your help to help her."

"Of course." Action was even better than thinking, and both were preferable to feeling.

Leena was searching a pocket of her coat when a series of groans came from the bedroom. Myka held up a finger and went into the room, leaving Leena craning her neck and trying to see what was wrong. Myka's father had worked off the quilts and was squirming in discomfort on the mattress. "I don't feel good," he said piteously. His head was damp with sweat, but his teeth were chattering.

"Leena," Myka called, "would you please come in here?" She tried to keep a comforting hand on her father's arm as Leena entered the room, but he moved away from her, looking wildly from Leena to Myka and back again. Myka crawled onto the bed and hugged her father to her. "You remember Leena, Dad, Mrs. Wells' housekeeper? She's a healer, and I want her to take a look at you."

"Don't need no healer. Just my headache remedy." He stared at Leena suspiciously as she sat at the foot of the bed.

"Would you let me look at you, Mr. Bering? I promise I won't be long about it."

He crowded closer to Myka, but he didn't object. Leena rose and Myka edged away from her father to give Leena room to examine him. She went to his dresser and took out one of the bottles containing his headache remedy. Leena was speaking to him in reassuring tones, and he was grumbling in response. Turning back toward the bed, Myka saw Leena tucking the quilts around her father. Glancing at the bottle in Myka's hand, Leena vigorously shook her head. Myka pantomimed pouring the contents out; her father, thankfully, didn't see it, having snuggled deeper under the covers.

Once the door was shut, Leena said, "He needs liquids but not alcohol. Keep an eye on his fever and let me know if it gets worse. Unfortunately there's not much I can do. It's been going around Sweetwater, coughing, fever, chills." She began searching the pocket of her coat again, withdrawing a piece of paper with a name and address scribbled on it. "I need you to send a telegram to this man at this address," she said, giving the paper to Myka. "You should send it to him in your father's name, as editor of the _Journal_."

Myka recognized the name, Henry Tremaine. The _Journal_ frequently reprinted articles in which he was named, if only in passing. There seemed to be no figure in the national government with whom he wasn't associated, for good or ill, and if the articles weren't discussing his political influence they were extolling the profits and growth of his businesses. Once, long ago, she had overheard her father talking politics with a friend. It was a presidential election year, and her father's friend was asking him who he thought would win, and her father had said, with a cynical chuckle, "Whoever Henry Tremaine is backing, of course." Somehow she knew she wasn't going to like the answer to her question, but she felt compelled to ask it anyway. "You want me to ask Mr. Tremaine to help Helena?" She forced herself to look up from the piece of paper and meet Leena's eyes.

"He won't remember my name. If he gets a telegram from an editor, even one in far-off Dakota Territory, he might take notice. I need you to tell Mr. Tremaine that Charlotte Ramsey has been arrested for murder." There was an entreaty in Leena's eyes that Myka hadn't seen before.

"And he'll help her?"

"If he's still the man I think he is, yes."

Myka didn't want to see the name on the paper anymore, so she folded the paper into a tiny square. She had no illusions about why Leena was so confident that a man of Mr. Tremaine's stature would help a woman in a very small town very far away from New York. Helena or Charlotte, whoever she was, must have been a very special mistress. The icicle inside her chest twisted sharply, hard enough that for a moment she couldn't breathe. "What's her real name?"

"Helena Wells." Leena looked intently into Myka's face. "There are many things Helena hasn't told you, and I'm sorry you're having to learn them this way, but the person she has been with you is not a lie. You need to believe that, no matter what you may hear."

Myka didn't look away, but she also didn't want to listen to Leena's reassurances about how much Helena cared for her, so she said as quickly as she could, "As soon as the telegraph office opens tomorrow, I'll send it off."

Once Leena left, she hurried to her alcove and dropped the piece of paper on the table beside her bed as if it had burned her fingers. She had her father to attend to now, and she was relieved to put Helena aside, at least for a little while. She brewed more coffee and toasted bread and sat with her father on his bed and pleaded with him to eat. He said his throat was too sore to eat the bread, but he weakly nodded when she asked him if he would take some broth. It was an ersatz broth she made, squeezing the juice from some tinned meat and then adding water to it. But he seemed to have no problem drinking it, although the smell had her stomach heaving. To be fair, the thought of food had her stomach heaving, but it wasn't practical not to eat, so she made a sandwich from the tinned meat and bread and tried to gulp it down without smelling it. Her father's fever was no better, but it seemed no worse, and although he wasn't sleeping easily, he was sleeping. Irresolute she stood in the parlor and then, having made up her mind, she put on her coat and a stouter pair of boots and mittens.

There was a light on in the jail, but she stood to the side of the door after she had knocked on it, and when Pete opened it, she said quietly so that only he could hear, "It's Myka."

He stepped onto the walk, closing the door behind him. "I'd ask you to come in out of the cold," he said, huddling deeper into his coat, "but -

"I know." Trying for as businesslike a tone as possible, Myka asked, "How is she?"

"Seems the same." He shrugged. "She sits on the cot and doesn't say a word. Her housekeeper was down here a bit ago, bringing her some extra blankets and food." He said plaintively, "I do feed them and try to keep them warm, you know. But Mrs. Wells hardly looked at her."

"Has Doc Collins come back from the ranch?"

"He stopped by this afternoon. Said it was just like it looked, she bashed. . . . " Pete coughed. "Mr. MacPherson died from blows to the head," he said, with an unhappy formality. "Once I get the doc's report, I'll give the _Journal_ whatever it needs."

"Leena said Helena has bruises, Pete." Myka still believed that, given the circumstances surrounding MacPherson's death, the fact that he had beaten Helena would weigh very little with a judge when it came to sentencing, but if it would cause him to show any mercy toward her, she needed to do her best to ensure that he was aware of it. Other than presenting it before the judge herself, which would never happen, she had to rely on Pete. If he hadn't seen the bruises, she would tell him to look for them, and if he had seen them, she would impress upon him the necessity of having Helena examined, of having Doc Collins sign a statement or agree to testify, whatever a court of law would require.

"I know," he said. She couldn't read his expression, but his exasperation was plain. "I asked her to let Doc Collins examine her, but she just about tore the cell apart when I suggested it. I suppose I could have forced the issue, but it won't matter in the end, Myka." A gentleness replaced the exasperation in his voice, and it frightened her more than it would have if he had suddenly grown stern. "I'm telling you this because you're her friend, so you can prepare yourself and her, if she'll let you. I'm going to be taking her up to Pierre sometime this week. It's the closest court to Sweetwater. A judge will sentence her there. Even if he can't get to her case right away, it's a more secure jail, with its own area for women prisoners." He laughed, but it held no humor. "I'm pretty sure she'll be the first."

Myka's throat had become so tight that all she could do was nod. But Pete couldn't see that, so she forced herself to say around the boulder lodged in her throat, "I'll be by to see her tomorrow." It came out as a croak, and she heard him sigh, but before he could say anything more, she was already hurrying back to the _Journal_.

There was no sleep for her – she spent the night in a chair next to her father's bed, alternately blotting the sweat from his face with a cloth and covering him with every quilt they owned when he began to shiver. When he fell into an unbroken sleep toward morning, unbroken except for mumbled complaints about being too hot, which were immediately followed by complaints about being too cold, Myka went back to her alcove to change her dress. The telegraph office would open soon, and she would be there with Leena's message to Henry Tremaine, a longer message now since she had thought she should provide some explanation for why the _Journal_'s editor would take it upon himself to disturb such an important personage, referring to "their mutual respect" for Helena. At the last minute, she increased its length by noting that the sheriff would be taking Helena to Pierre to await sentencing.

The telegraph operator couldn't maintain his usual air of impassivity as he sent the telegram. "You don't say," he kept murmuring to himself. She ignored his comments and crumpled the paper into a ball, tucking it deep into her pocket as she left the office. She would throw it into the stove once she returned home, although she was sure that between MacPherson's staff, the loiterers outside the jail, and the telegraph operator, the entire town would be fully apprised of the situation. There was almost no need for the _Journal_ to publish the story, except for the fact that gossip was neither accurate nor impartial, and Myka had no illusions about the townspeople's generosity of spirit toward Helena.

More blotting of her father's damp face, covering him up to his chin with quilts, and getting him to take a few sips of water awaited her when she returned home. At least this was a day that Mrs. Grabel came, and though she showed no inclination to assist Myka with her ailing father, she kept the stove filled with wood and she set about making a decent pot of broth. Her presence allowed Myka to leave the _Journal_ again, this time for the jail. She ran, holding her hands over her ears because she had forgotten to bring a scarf, but Pete's greeting to her from the doorway of the jail was a grim shaking of his head. Jerking his thumb toward the shadowy cell in back, he informed her that Mrs. Wells wasn't speaking to anyone this morning either. As Myka trudged back to the _Journal_, she saw the boy who delivered telegrams from the telegraph office standing outside the door. She fished out a coin from the recesses of her coat to give him as he handed her the telegram. It was from Henry Tremaine, and it demanded of Mr. Warren Bering, editor of the _Sweetwater Journal_, answers to the following:

Whether Mrs. Ramsey had offered any defense of her actions

Whether an attorney had been hired to represent her

Whether Mr. Bering could recommend a hotel as he anticipated that he would be arriving in Sweetwater within the next 48 hours.

Myka was running again, this time to the telegraph office, to send a response, unable to tell whether she still held Mr. Tremaine's telegram as she could no longer feel her fingers. As she flew into the room, neatly divided by the counter behind which the operator sent and received the town's telegrams, he slipped off his stool and seemed to leap the one or two steps that separated the stool from the counter, holding out a pencil and paper for her to write her message. This time it was much more brief, consisting of No, No, and the Sweetwater Hotel.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid as she left the telegraph office and looked toward Helena's home at the far end of the street. Its gabled roof loomed above the trees, and smoke curled from its chimneys. She needed to tell Leena about Henry Tremaine's telegram, but her feet were unwilling to move in the direction of the house, perhaps because, like her hands, they had become blocks of ice, but in reality she knew it was because she was afraid, like she had been last night when Pete said he would have to take Helena to Pierre and she knew she was powerless to stop him. Mr. Tremaine was coming; she could almost hear his train rocketing along the tracks to Sweetwater, full of fire and speed and power. If her hopes and wishes were of little consequence to the law, they were of even less consequence to men like Henry Tremaine. He might be the only one who could save Helena, but men like him didn't attain the positions they held without expecting to be recompensed for their efforts. He would want something for the mountains he might need to move on Helena's behalf, and Myka would be powerless to stop from him from taking it.

There also remained the possibility that even his influence wouldn't be enough to save Helena. Although it was all but settled that the Territory would be accepted into the Union as two states, North Dakota and South Dakota, its inhabitants prided themselves on their independence, their distance from the "cesspool" of the nation's capital and the fleshpots and dens of iniquity that passed for cities in the East. Henry Tremaine would represent all of it, and the assumption people would draw about the nature of his relationship with Helena would only fix in their minds that she was a whore, a foreign whore at that, and thus automatically guilty of any crime one wanted to attribute to her. No one would see that she was someone's daughter, sister. . . mother. Christina. Myka forced herself to breathe in as deeply as she could, the cold burning her nose, making her teeth and her eyes water. She focused on Helena's house; it wasn't just bigger, it was set apart from the other homes, too grand for its surroundings, much like Helena herself. Her feet began to move, clumsily, painfully because they were wood not flesh, but Myka urged them to go faster. She had no time to waste; it would take several days, a week or more, for a letter to travel that far. It was already too late – Helena might be sentenced before they responded, if they responded – but she had to try.

She banged on the kitchen door and then, once a startled Leena let her in, she brusquely swept past her, down the hall, across the foyer, and into the library. Tracking snow over the expensive rug, Myka went to Helena's desk, so dark, so massive, in the gloom, and began to open each drawer. Helena wouldn't have thrown it away, she would never throw away anything that Christina might have once touched, breathed upon, looked at. Myka found it in one of the large bottom drawers, a sturdy, oversized envelope big enough to hold the picture on Helena's desk and, on the back, an address. Myka copied it, her chapped, reddened fingers almost too stiff to curl around the pen.

Leena had followed her into the room. "She wouldn't want her family to know, Myka."

"Does she know that you had me send a telegram to Henry Tremaine?" Myka asked coolly. Leena looked away. "He's coming. I think he must have replied to my telegram as soon he got it." She studied the picture. It had been a long time since she had looked at it. It was probably only a trick of her imagination, but she thought that she saw a challenge in the pose Christina assumed for the camera; her chin was up and a little outthrust, and she seemed to be leaning toward the lens, as if daring the photographer to capture her at less than her best. Myka devoutly hoped that it was more than a girl's playful adoption of a role, a flirtation with the camera. She was counting on Christina being her mother's daughter. With a return of her customary earnestness, she said, "They ought to know. If it were my family, no matter how bitterly we may have quarreled, they would want to know."

Leena only turned away. Clutching the address and rounding the desk, Myka called to Leena's retreating back, "You think this isn't my place. But judges take into account pleas for mercy, and her family ought to be given the opportunity to plead for her. Whether they do, or not, should be up to them."

Leena paused, turning to face her. "I'm not passing judgment on what you're trying to do, Myka. But Helena won't see it the way you do. She won't understand." They were standing in the foyer, and Myka remembered the first time she visited the house. She had been impressed, but she had been impressed even more by its owner. "To have her family find out . . . it will be a bitter blow for her."

"I don't expect her to understand," Myka said curtly. And she didn't. She knew how proud Helena was, and she knew how much shame was mixed in with the anger and grief about Christina that Helena still carried. Helena would view any communication with her family as a betrayal, and although Myka tried to squelch the thought that then came into her mind, she couldn't find a compartment to stuff it in fast enough and it was out of her mouth before she could stop it. "She'll have to learn to live with betrayal just like the rest of us." She flushed at how dramatic it sounded; she wasn't dramatic. She was sensible, practical, and, more importantly, numb. She was an icicle. Again there seemed something perilously close to sympathy in Leena's eyes, and Myka almost fled down the paved walk, slipping on the snow but not slowing until she was far down the street.

When she returned home, Mrs. Grabel had left, but the broth was still on the stove, and she ladled a cup and brought it into her father. His bedroom had begun to smell like a sickroom, and Myka wished she could open a window to freshen the air. Instead she plumped his pillows and shook the quilts. She took an ancient nightshirt from his dresser and carefully worked him into it, leaving his sweat-soaked union suit on the floor. She would gather it with the rest of his clothes for the laundry that had needed to be done days ago. He was still feverish, but he seemed marginally more interested in the broth than he had been yesterday, although that might have had something to do with the fact that Mrs. Grabel had made the broth; he even had enough spirit to grump at her briefly for helping him to hold the cup to his lips. He quieted after that, and once she was sure he was asleep, she went into the office and rummaged through a box that rested dusty and undisturbed in a corner. It held odds and ends of stationery and card stock. In other towns, her father had taken the occasional printing job, invitations, announcements of special events, and the like, and he had kept the leftover paper. You never knew when it might come in handy.

Such as now. She dug out heavy, cream colored paper that she would use for her letter to Charles Wells and, farther down, she found a pale blue card with a matching envelope. It looked like the kind of card young ladies might receive inviting them to a dance or party, or at least she thought it did. She had never received invitations like that herself. Young girls didn't receive invitations from strangers; Myka knew there was a chance that her letter would be thrown away, but she was betting that Christina's curiosity wouldn't be easily deterred. Disguising her letter to Helena's daughter as an invitation wasn't a deception she had wanted to engage in, but Christina was her best chance to influence the adult Wellses.

Taking the paper and a heavy book to write on into her father's bedroom, Myka sat in the chair she had placed next to his bed and tried to tell Christina about her mother. She had thought it would be difficult to write about Helena, and Myka had made sure that her more complicated feelings about Helena were safely stored in the resurrected Helena drawer, and before she put pen to paper, she tried to recall Helena in the first weeks she had known her, when Helena was simply, only the most fascinating person she had ever met, hauteur alternating with warmth, impatience with generosity. But as she recounted to Christina her aunt's "scientific experiments" with Claudia, her stable of horses rescued from the boneyard, her support of the _Journal_ and her efforts to keep Sweetwater's railroad running through Sweetwater, Myka returned to the box of stationery and card stock more than once for extra sheets of paper, and she felt free of the anxiety and fear, and anger, that had threatened to overwhelm her since she woke alone in Helena's bed. She had intended to refer to Helena's arrest only in the vaguest terms, a "calamitous misfortune" that would "dishearten the stoutest of us" but she kept seeing Helena as she had first met her, head held high, standing amidst the sawdust and liquor bottles of the Spur as if it were the drawing room of a mansion, and she knew then with a certainty she didn't need to question that Helena hadn't killed MacPherson. Helena was capable of killing him, of that she was sure, and had Pete told her that Helena had been holding the gun that had opened a hole in MacPherson's chest or wiping the knife that had been plunged into his heart, she wouldn't have doubted him, wouldn't have wondered if there were two Helenas, the one who, often to her detriment, never retreated from a confrontation, and the one who had taken MacPherson unaware, attacking him from behind, as if she hadn't the strength or resolve to face him as she struck him. It had never set quite right with her, the manner of MacPherson's death and the character of the woman who, inexplicably it seemed now, had confessed to killing him. But she would puzzle that out later, why Helena had confessed, her immediate task was to convince Christina that her aunt couldn't possibly be guilty.

So "calamitous misfortune" became "accused of a heinous crime that she did not commit," and Myka expressed her fears that Helena's reputation would convict her more readily than the evidence in language that hinted at Helena's unconventional conduct without actually specifying it. Christina's aunt was a "liberal-minded woman" with an "independent spirit" and "all too frequently misunderstood by those who knew her only by what others said about her." Myka bit the end of her pen, unsure how to close the letter; finally she decided to be as honest as she thought possible with a fifteen-year-old girl, who, regardless of how precocious she might be, was doubtless sheltered and young for her years, in other words, worlds apart from a fifteen-year-old Myka Bering. Revealing that she was writing to her without her aunt's knowledge or approval, Myka acknowledged that

_if Miss Wells has a single flaw, it is her pride. Deprived of her family's comfort in what is her darkest hour, she refuses to burden them with the knowledge of her situation, which is grave indeed. Unable to countenance such self-sacrifice, I have made it my duty to inform you of the misfortune that has befallen her and the utter miscarriage of justice that it represents. I beg of you to remind her that she remains a beloved daughter, sister, and aunt._

Myka grimaced as she reread the end of her letter. To importune a mere girl like this, it was shameful, and she was ashamed. But she was also desperate. In the middle of the night, with no one to witness her helplessness, except her sleeping father, she could admit that she didn't know where else to turn or what else to do. She unclenched the pen, dropping it into her lap, and tried to work the cramp out of her fingers. There was one more letter to write.

It didn't dwell on Helena's wonderful qualities. It stated the crime she was charged with, the likelihood that she would be found guilty although she was innocent of any wrongdoing, and the possibility that, if found guilty, she would be executed. At the end, her penmanship losing grace and legibility, its wild scrawl matching the rush of terror she felt at the thought of a judge sentencing Helena to die, Myka didn't hesitate to plead with Christina's father as well.

_She bitterly regrets the estrangement between you but cannot bring herself, at this desperate pass, to attempt to end it for fear that pity and a sense of obligation would be the motivation for your response rather than love. I have neither her stiff-necked pride nor her doubts of your affection, so I urge you to reassure her of her place in your heart. I would also urge you to add your voice to those of us who will be clamoring to see justice prevail and your sister proclaimed innocent. I know that the brother of so fine a woman as Helena Wells would not sit idly or silently by when his sister's life hangs in the balance._

She sealed the envelopes before she could regret what she had written. Perhaps Helena's family would be offended at the temerity of a stranger addressing them so familiarly about their daughter, but she couldn't imagine them being indifferent to Helena's plight.

While she had written well into the night, it would still be hours before the telegraph office (which also served as the town's post office) opened. She could try to sleep, though the chair would prove no more comfortable tonight than it had last night. Or she could spend the time helping justice to prevail by trying to figure out what had really happened at MacPherson's ranch.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Glad to see so many of you returned for the sequel. **

She couldn't remember when it was she decided to go to MacPherson's ranch, after she finished the letters to Christina and Charles Wells but before dawn. She had taken more paper from the card stock box and, in the glow from the lamp, written down what facts she knew, trying to create a timeline of events, from when she thought Helena would have left for the ranch to when Pete brought her back to town in handcuffs. Something about it seemed wrong, but she couldn't figure out what it was. That was when she had decided a trip out to the ranch was in order. She hoped she could convince Pete to take her since it would lend her trip some authority but, if necessary, she would go without him. She was returning from the telegraph office where she had mailed the two letters to England, and instead of crossing the street toward the _Journal_ and sitting with her father, she kept walking toward the jail. In what was becoming a sad routine, she announced herself through the door and waited outside, her breath frosting in the air, for Pete to join her. He greeted her by saying that Mrs. Wells still wasn't talking to anyone, well, except her housekeeper, but he couldn't swear that Helena was actually speaking to her; mainly she just sat silent on her cot while Miss Leena fussed around her. When Myka asked if Helena was eating and sleeping, he rolled one shoulder. "Sort of." She was about to broach her idea of visiting the ranch when he demanded, "Who is Henry Tremaine and why is he taking such an interest in Mrs. Wells?"

"Do you never read a newspaper?" As usual Myka had forgotten her scarf, and the breeze lifting her hair was so icy that her scalp burned.

He gave her another roll of his shoulder. "If it has pictures."

"What have you gotten from him?"

"Only about 10,000 telegrams since yesterday telling me not to do anything about Mrs. Wells until he arrives. Who's he to be telling me what I can or can't do? He's not the law," Pete said indignantly, glancing down at the star pinned to his shirt.

"No," Myka said dryly, "he's above it."

"So I figured. He's been in contact with the court in Pierre, and Mrs. Wells stays here for now." Pete expressed his disapproval of Tremaine's high-handedness in a noise that was part snort, part growl.

Relieved that Helena wouldn't be taken to Pierre, at least not yet, Myka realized it wasn't the best time to ask him about going to the ranch, but she needed to see where the murder had happened. The belief that had blossomed in her last night that Helena couldn't have killed MacPherson hadn't weakened, but she needed to see for herself. She needed to be in the rooms where Helena had been, see what Helena had seen; as much as she flinched at the thought, because she didn't want to dwell on what had happened between Helena and MacPherson before his death, she needed to put herself in Helena's shoes. After studying the snow clinging to her boots, she said, "I want to see where MacPherson was killed. Would you be able to take me to the ranch?"

"Are you playing Pinkerton again, like when you wanted to see where Joshua Donovan was found? She confessed, Myka. Nothing you're going to see there is going to tell you anything different."

She understood that his irritability had more to do with his being cooped up in a one-room jail than with her request. Pete liked to keep the peace by making himself visible, walking the town and stopping in at the various businesses to chat, asking the barber about any new arrivals in town while getting a shave and chewing a piece of licorice in the general store as a clerk listed the petty thefts from the past week. With a prisoner on his hands, one as potentially volatile as Helena Wells, he was compelled to keep close to the jail, and he was both bored and on edge. Yet Myka had to struggle not to show a flash of anger. He had been dismissive of her desire to investigate Joshua's death, and he had been wrong; she would prove him wrong about MacPherson's death too.

"This is for the _Journal_, Pete." She hadn't intended to say that at all. "My father's too sick to write the story, and if I have to write it, I need to see things for myself."

"Why can't you work off Doc Collins' report? That's how Sanderson used to handle things. He didn't need to see where Clyde Perkins waylaid Buster Jones, and he didn't have to examine the bull that gored Chester Farrell." The good-naturedness that so frequently stamped his expression had been replaced by a scowl.

Because I believe the first question a newspaperman should ask is "Why?" not "What's the easiest way to get the story written?" But she didn't say that. She also didn't say "Because I value the accuracy of a newspaper's content, not the number of its advertisements." But it wouldn't just be small of her to make her point by sneering at Mr. Sanderson, it would be ineffective. Especially since there was something else she could say that would get Pete to take her to the ranch. "Then I'll hire a trap and go out there myself."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You can't just a hire a trap. You need something with runners in this snow, and it's still not going to be easy. And don't tell me you'll ride out there on horseback, because I've seen you ride a horse. You wouldn't be able to manage one in this weather. Even if you were to make your way out there, you honestly think you can traipse up to the front door and say you're there for the _Journal_ and they'll let you in?" Under his breath he said, "If there's anybody still out there to come to the door." He put his hands on his hips and looked down, as if he were studying the snow on Myka's boots as well. After a moment, he raised his head. "I can't take you out there today, but I can probably swing something tomorrow. I need to remind Hagen that he's my deputy. He can watch Mrs. Wells while I'm gone."

She didn't like to take advantage of his inherent courtliness, his instinct to make the gallant gesture, in no small part because she didn't like to appear to be in need of his assistance, but she was, as she had been since Sunday morning, desperate. If she wanted to help Helena, she had to be willing to do whatever was necessary. She would need to find someone to sit with her father, however. He had seemed to sleep easier the night before, at least every time she had jerked awake in the chair, he had been asleep, but now as he inhaled, she could hear a phlegmy rattle in his chest that hadn't been there before. Perhaps Mrs. Grabel, with the promise of additional money, would sit with him, or sit in the kitchen and listen to him through the thin walls.

Although she fretted about the fragility of her own health, claiming that Mr. Grabel had had to place bricks warmed in the stove at the foot of their bed every night to ward off the chills that she so easily succumbed to, her eyes remained shrewd and appraising. Myka found herself increasing the amount she would pay with each tiny cough that Mrs. Grabel emitted behind a handkerchief as large as a dinner napkin. When Myka finally arrived at a price Mrs. Grabel found satisfactory, she dispensed with both the cough and the handkerchief, telling Myka that she would come at nine the next morning.

Myka's father had shown little interest in why his daughter would be away much of the following day, his groans becoming only slightly louder when she said that Mrs. Grabel would be looking after him until she returned. His coughing was growing worse, becoming an unending accompaniment to every task she set for herself, her half-hearted attempts to clean their rooms, her sallies to the kitchen to fix him something he might eat, and her efforts to complete the layout of the next _Journal_. In the end, Myka included only a few brief paragraphs on MacPherson's death, noting that "evidence suggests he died violently" and that "Mrs. Helena Wells, in whose company he was last seen, was being held for questioning." Myka couldn't bring herself to write that Helena had been arrested for murder, justifying her evasion by telling herself that there was no benefit to inflaming the town, although the town didn't seem particularly troubled by MacPherson's death or outraged by the fact that Helena appeared to be the agent of it. The number of loiterers around the jail hadn't noticeably increased, and the people passing by the jail on their errands attempted no more than cursory looks through the windows, their curiosity rewarded only by the sight of faded curtains drawn closed. But Myka feared that the more time people had to speculate, to swap theories, the more they would give vent to their old suspicions of Helena, the Englishwoman who stepped off a train over three years ago, knowing not a soul in Sweetwater and telling no one her history or reason for being there.

The next morning Myka, bundled in several layers of wool, including underskirts that made her skin itch, sat next to a terse and grumpy Pete, who snapped commands at a pair of horses no more eager than he, it seemed, to cross miles of frozen prairie to the site of a murder already solved, the killer unburdened of her confession and locked in a cell. Myka had promised him that she wouldn't be long, wanting only to fix the scene in her mind, she reminded him, for the benefit of the _Journal_'s readers. He raised his eyebrows in skepticism, but he hadn't challenged her, giving her a boost up to the seat before coming around the trap to take his place beside her. The sky was the same milky white as the snow, the high, thin covering of clouds a harbinger of more snow to come. Myka wondered how close Henry Tremaine was to Sweetwater, if he would arrive before the snow came. She knew that without him Helena faced a noose or, at best, the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison, but just the thought of him seemed to make the wind blow harder and the temperature drop, and she shivered through all her layers.

"How does this Tremaine fellow know Mrs. Wells, anyway?" Pete said suddenly. He was scowling over the reins at the horses. He barked at them and they shook their heads, their harnesses jingling, before quickening their pace.

They had passed the Sykes ranch over an hour ago and this was the first time that Pete had spoken to her since they left Sweetwater. The first time he had opened his mouth other than to shout at the horses, and he had chosen to ask this question. Myka knew that, essentially, he was a fair-minded man, and despite Helena's dismissiveness of him as a good-natured lummox, an opinion she didn't always try to hide, he had been capable of a surprising amount of sympathy for her. Yet telling him that Helena had been Henry Tremaine's mistress wouldn't make him any more sympathetic toward her. He already resented Tremaine's disdain for the processes of the law, especially as that disdain was concretely expressed in Tremaine's interference with his duties as sheriff. Not that Myka thought Pete would treat Helena with anything less than his customary courtesy and, particularly in her case, long-suffering patience, but there was also no sense in introducing more friction into the relationship. "I think they knew each other in New York," she said lamely, realizing how it failed to explain Tremaine's aggressive involvement in a situation that most would think too unimportant for a man of his stature.

"Know each other?" Pete repeated. "They must have known each other pretty well for him to be throwing his weight around like this." His eyes grew wide, the import of his words sinking in, but as he continued to stare at Myka, the incipient smirk on his lips began to shrink. "Very, uh, altruistic of him, I guess," he mumbled.

"Yes, very," Myka said quietly, and, again, she thought she could hear the roar of the train as it brought Henry Tremaine closer.

MacPherson's home seemed far less imposing as Pete turned the trap into the drive and guided it toward the front entrance. When Myka had first seen the house, towering on a rise of the prairie, an English manor removed from its natural setting, like a jewel prised from a ring, she had thought it no less grand for looking so out of place. Against the harsh lightness of the sky, it looked smaller, and with snowdrifts lapping like waves against its walls, it looked colder. Once they were inside the house, after being greeted with only a jerk of the head and a begrudging "Might as well come in since you're here" from the housekeeper, Myka noticed the dust and grit on the unswept floor and the single lamp lit on a table in the hallway. The house was already assuming the desolate air of the about-to-be abandoned, and she wished that the clumping of their boots as she and Pete walked toward the library wasn't so loud.

She put a hand on Pete's arm, and he looked at her questioningly. "I want to see his bedroom first." She hadn't given much thought to the bedroom until now; even when, in an unwanted flash, she would see Helena in MacPherson's robe, her hair unbound and that mocking smile on her face as MacPherson grabbed at her, she hadn't pictured them in an actual room. They had circled one another in the air, as if they were being held by wires above a darkened stage. But obviously they had been in a room, his room.

"He was killed in the library." Pete's voice sank to a whisper, as the housekeeper, who had been tsking over the puddles of water they were leaving on the floor, straightened and alertly turned toward them.

"Have you wondered why she would kill him in the library?" Myka hissed, marching back toward the staircase.

"I don't have to know why. All I have to know is that she did it, and she said she did," Pete said as he followed her. Out of the corner of her eye, Myka saw him point up the stairs, the housekeeper's curiosity compelling her to trail them to the foot of the staircase.

"What do you think you're going to find up there?" The housekeeper demanded.

"Won't know until we look," Pete said. Myka imagined him smiling ingratiatingly at her, hoping to charm her out of her suspiciousness with a little boy grin. Myka didn't have to imagine the housekeeper's harrumph, even the thunder of Pete's boots on the stairs didn't quite drown it out. She waited on the landing for Pete to join her and then gestured for him to take the lead. He led her to a door on their right, hand poised to knock before he remembered that there was no one to prevent them from entering.

The room was so dark that Myka thought she might have to feel her way into it. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, which only deepened the gloom. Moving farther into the room, she was confronted with the bed, which seemed to take up half the space and grow larger the longer she looked at it. Someone had straightened the sheets and bedspread and plumped the pillows. Myka was tempted to fling the covers back, although she didn't know what she would be looking for. She passed a hand across the pillows, wondering if, when she raised her hand, it would have caught any of Helena's hair. Helena had done that occasionally when Myka couldn't force herself to leave before dawn, removed the stray hairs from the pillows Myka had slept on and threatened to braid a watch chain from them there had been so many at times. But those moments in bed with her were very different from whatever had happened here, between Helena and MacPherson, and Myka snatched her hand from the pillows.

"Myka." Pete hadn't moved from where he stood when they had entered the bedroom, just inside the door. "What are you looking for?"

With a stride that she hoped looked purposeful, Myka went to the fireplace and lifted the poker. "Why not hit him with this? If she was going to kill him, why not kill him here?" She put the poker down and pointed at the bed. "Why not smother him with a pillow as he slept?"

Pete shrugged. "Maybe she didn't want to kill him then. When I took her back up here so she could get dressed, there was a table with a bottle of wine in front of the fireplace." He shifted his feet uncomfortably. "Maybe things were all, um, cozy between them up here."

Myka crossed to the bureau and examined the few items on top of it, a hairbrush, a watch, a handful of coins. "Did she tell you why they were in the library? Did you ask her?"

"No. Myka, how many times do I have to tell you that she confessed?" He stepped into the hallway. "Nothing happened in there, at least nothing your readers need to know about."

Pete was right, there was nothing here. But there should have been something. Something that would have told her why Helena had come out to MacPherson's ranch, why, as she told Leena, she had hoped to negotiate with him. If Helena wouldn't answer any of her questions, this room should. It couldn't lie or fudge the truth or look at her with dark eyes as cold and remote as the night. Myka didn't realize how tightly she was holding herself, how hard she was clenching her hands into fists until Pete came back into the room saying "Hey, hey" so softly that he might have been talking to a horse about to bolt, and she followed him then, without saying a word.

The library was cold, colder than the other rooms they had been in, and Myka rubbed her arms even though she had never unfastened her coat. Pete led her to the side of the desk and pointed to the floor. "That's where he was, lying face down."

Myka knelt, trying to picture how MacPherson had fallen. Had he been struck at the side of his desk and immediately collapsed, or had he been struck elsewhere, in front of the desk most likely, and staggered forward a few paces before he fell? There were stains on the floorboards that might be blood, and she touched them hesitantly. They were dry and left no mark on her fingers. "Where's the statue he was struck with?"

"Back at the jail. Couldn't leave it here," Pete said. As Myka slowly rose from the floor, he rapped his knuckles on a far corner of the desk. "Desk is pretty dusty, except for this spot. The shape fits the base of the statue. She was angry, and it was handy, and bam." Pete brought his arm forward as if he were hitting someone from behind.

"Why were they at his desk?"

"She didn't say, and I didn't ask. I didn't need to."

Myka closed her eyes briefly; it was more diplomatic than glaring at him. She surveyed the top of the desk, which was empty except for a blotter. Opening the drawers one by one, she flicked through their contents: old bills in date order, various items of correspondence, letters of a more personal nature from a Mrs. Carol MacPherson. Pete hadn't yet objected to her rifling through the desk, but he was shifting his feet, and she expected, at any moment, a plaintive inquiry about why she was going through MacPherson's personal papers. She shut the last drawer; she had found nothing that appeared to have meaning for anyone other than James MacPherson. The fireplace was in her line of sight as she lifted her eyes from the desk, and she tilted her head studying it intently before she swept from around the desk and sank to her knees in front of the charred logs. Picking out scraps of burned paper from between the logs, she tried to fit them together, but they crumbled to ash. While it was always possible that MacPherson had chosen to burn documents in the fireplace, she suspected that it had been MacPherson's murderer - or Helena. What had MacPherson possessed that Helena would have prostituted herself to get?

Wiping her hands on her coat and streaking it with ash, she blew on her fingers to warm them. And why was it so cold in here? She looked at the windows at the end of the room. The center windows were doors, she realized, and as she stared harder, she noticed a sliver of daylight between them. Myka tried to pull the doors shut, but the door on the right wouldn't stay closed, swinging back slightly. She bent to inspect the latch, fingering gouges and grooves in the wood near the plate. Pushing the door open, she stepped out onto the terrace, which was bleak and windswept, the shrubs in their ornamental pots dry and brittle-looking. There were more gouges on the outside of the door. Pete had come to the windows and was staring at her in disbelief. Beyond the imprints of her boots in the snow, there were tracks leading to the edge of the terrace. They were partially covered over with snow, not fresh, and Myka bit her lip in frustration as she recognized that her own movements around the doors had obliterated additional tracks, tracks that might have proved that the other visitor had entered the library through those doors, not merely stood outside them. She began searching the terrace for more footprints, spotting a patch of well-trampled snow behind the shrubs bordering the windows. She circled it carefully; whoever had stood here had stayed for some time, the prints crossed and recrossed each other, as though the man had been pacing. From here she could look into the library, and although her view wasn't unobstructed, both the angle and the shrubs preventing her from seeing all of the room, she could see the desk. Nodding to herself, she reentered the library, and, without looking at Pete, said, "I've seen what I've needed to see here. I'm ready to go back to town." He had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her, and as they returned to the foyer, Myka said grimly, "You'd better prepare Helena for a visit from me, and this time, I'm not leaving until she talks to me."

It was early evening by the time they reached Sweetwater, and on the ride back, it had been Myka who was silent and withdrawn. She climbed down from the trap and then leaned across the seat. Speaking for practically the first time since they had left the ranch, she reminded Pete, "Tell her I'm coming." It was dark but not so dark that she couldn't see him shake his head.

"Myka, I'm not going to have her beat herself against the cell to avoid having to talk to you."

"You don't have to be there, Pete. I'm not going to try and help her escape." She laughed humorlessly. "She obviously doesn't want to."

As he slapped the reins, the horses breaking into a trot, Myka went to the back of the building, knocking her boots against the kitchen door to rid them of snow. The kitchen was dark, and when she called out softly to Mrs. Grabel, she received no response. The only light came from the parlor, and Mrs. Grabel was on the sofa, snoring quietly, hands resting limply on the knitting in her lap. Myka looked in on her father; he was asleep too, his breathing loud and harsh.

Mrs. Grabel was blinking herself awake as Myka returned to the parlor. Gathering her knitting, she gave Myka a measuring look that had Myka thinking she was going to end up owing Mrs. Grabel more than they had agreed upon. "A man's been here to see you, several times. At first he was here to see your father, but when I told him that you handle matters concerning the _Journal_ when Mr. Bering is indisposed, he demanded to see you." Mrs. Grabel's disapproving sniff was all she allowed herself, today, concerning Myka's unwomanly assumption of her father's duties. "He's been coming every half-hour to see if you've returned. Thinks himself important, that one." Another sniff, this time meant for the Berings' importunate visitor.

Myka dug into the pin money jar to pay Mrs. Grabel. The level of bills and coins was perilously low again, but she had enough. After Mrs. Grabel left, Myka turned hopefully to the stove; sometimes Mrs. Grabel made herself lunch, and there was enough for Myka to eat for supper. But the pots and pans were empty, and Myka disconsolately nibbled on a dried-up rind of cheese. She sat next to her father's bed, watching him sleep and trying to shut out the phlegmy bubble she heard in his throat after every inhalation. His fever was down, and he was sleeping more restfully, but she didn't like that his lungs were so congested. He was neither a young man nor one in good health, and she knew what could happen if his lungs couldn't rid themselves of the infection. She crept out of the bedroom, intending to bring back a cup of water. He might be thirsty when he next woke.

Her head was down when she closed the door, otherwise she would have seen him. But she didn't need to see him to feel the change in the air, as if a strong wind were about to blow through their quarters. It was the hair suddenly prickling on the back of her neck that made her look up, and, unaccountably, she thought in that last second before she saw him that it was Helena, because she had only ever felt a charge in a room when Helena had entered it.

He was looking at the press, scornfully she thought, and she was glad for the spurt of anger it prompted because anger alone carried her across the floor when the heavy-lidded gaze focused on her, only somewhat less scornfully. In the slow flick of his eyes, which not only traveled the length of her –finding nothing worthy of stopping their descent –but also took in the shabby furniture, the ancient trunks, and the sad little knick-knacks that had accompanied them from place to place, she felt he was totting up the value, not just of the_ Journal_ but of the Berings, father and daughter, and concluding that it didn't amount to very much. While she took a petty pleasure in the fact that he was no taller than she, the pleasure was tempered by her awareness of how powerful he was through the shoulders and chest. She was reminded of the caricatures she had seen of him; the massive chest supported by two spindly legs and the hooded eyes dominating the face weren't unfair exaggerations. If the world was an engine, Henry Tremaine, squat, solid, and impervious, was one of the parts that propelled it.

"You're Myka Bering," he said without preamble. "We have much to do, Miss Bering." He waved an arm toward the press. "A one-man operation, is it? We need something larger, faster, capable of printing a great many copies."

"We're a small town, Mr. Tremaine. We don't have the readership—"

"This is not small news," he said abruptly. "MacPherson was not without influential friends, and the New York papers will be full of it before too long, spreading calumny against Mrs., ah, Wells. It will be felt out here, I assure you." He rubbed his hands together, as though he were ready to begin setting type for the next edition. "This paper's handling of her arrest has not helped her, but the damage, I hope, is limited. Going forward, I'll provide you with the items to be printed about Mrs. Wells, but we need a bigger organ than the, the. . . ." He snapped his fingers. "The _Journal_."

"If by calumny, you mean the fact that she confessed to killing him, the New York papers would have every right to print it. As for our 'handling' of the matter, I believe we were discreet, not disclosing that she had confessed or been arrested," Myka said evenly, although she wanted to shrink from the scrutiny of the disturbingly light-colored eyes, so light a brown as to be almost yellow. He wasn't glaring at her but rather appraising her, as if she were a specimen he had never before examined.

"Miss Bering, you seem to have an unrealistic idea of what the purpose of a newspaper is," Mr. Tremaine said with a paternal smile. "It doesn't exist to print 'facts' or the 'truth' because those change shape depending on who controls them. A newspaper exists to sell things - products, candidates, causes, even wars. It may be distasteful to you, but we need to sell Mrs. Wells to this Territory."

"I think you're doing a disservice to its citizens," Myka said. "They can recognize the truth without it having to be 'sold' to them." She wasn't sure of that at all. She wasn't confident that Sweetwater could put aside its suspicions of Helena to view her objectively, but he rankled her, this man, with his assumption that people were so many sheep to be herded this way and that. "Battling lies with more lies won't help her case."

He cocked his head, as if looking at her from a different angle would make her more recognizable to him. "You ask me to help her, but you seem unwilling to help her yourself. Tell me, Miss Bering, were the situation reversed and you were in that jail, what would Mrs. Wells be doing?"

Everything in her power, Myka knew. And more. Helena would tear down the jail if she thought it necessary to free her. But what would they have after that? A life on the run and the recriminations that would follow because of it. Mr. Tremaine might be able to buy Helena's freedom, but the rumors would trail her like smoke, that she had killed a man and gotten away with it. Myka was wagering on something larger, Helena's innocence. Strange to think she was more reckless than that exceptionally heedless woman sitting on the cot in her cell. Order, reason, practicality, these were what governed her life and none of them could explain why she was convinced she could free Helena by proving that someone else had killed MacPherson. By rights she ought to be throwing in her lot with the cynical man standing across from her or walking away from Helena's predicament altogether.

Her voice rough and low, she said, "Helena may have confessed, but she didn't kill him, Mr. Tremaine. I intend to help her by proving her innocent." Had she stressed Helena's name a little? She probably shouldn't have referred to her so familiarly in front of him, but his assumption that if she didn't agree with his plan then she must not have Helena's best interests at heart offended her. She also couldn't deny that his very presence reminded her that Helena had had other lovers, another life before she came to Sweetwater. A life richer in every sense of the word than her life here. There would be nothing to hold Helena in Sweetwater, were she to be freed, Myka thought, except her. And who was she next to Henry Tremaine?

"That's a fool's game," he said, interrupting the depressing course of her thoughts. He was pulling gloves over large, blunt-fingered hands, and Myka suspected his one hand could swallow the both of hers. "Whether she's innocent is irrelevant." With a last dismissive look around the _Journal_'s office, which included her in its dismissiveness, Henry Tremaine pressed forward on legs that were, in fact, disproportionately small in comparison to his upper body but by no means matchsticks. Passing her, he stopped long enough to say, "If you and your father won't work with me, I will work around you."

Then, in a gust of wind, or so it felt to Myka, he was gone, and, in spite of herself, she touched the desk to make sure she was still standing. Deciding to look in on her father, she saw that he was awake, and, for the first time in days, his eyes met hers without drifting away. "I heard you talking to a man." He sounded weak and fretful, but this was the first time he had shown any awareness of what was happening outside the walls of his room.

Myka considered explaining Mr. Tremaine's visit as someone seeking to do business with the _Journal_, but in case Mr. Tremaine returned and ended up speaking with her father, she thought he should be prepared. "Helena is in trouble. She's been arrested for murder." Given how her father's mouth dropped opened and his eyelids seemed to disappear into his head, she regretted having blurted out the truth.

"Who?" He whispered.

"James MacPherson."

His forehead wrinkled as he tried to puzzle out the connection. "Why?"

"I don't know. She won't say anything about it except to claim that she killed him."

"Damfool woman." Her father began to pick at the topmost quilt covering him.

"I don't think she did it," Myka said softly, trying to take his restless hand in hers.

With more speed than she thought possible, he jerked his hand away from hers. "Of course, you don't," he said, his voice thready, almost wheezing, but the anger in it was plain. "You've always given her the benefit of the doubt, though she hardly deserves it the way she acts." His arms trembling with the effort, he attempted to push himself up to a sitting position. Stifling a sigh, Myka rearranged his pillows to support his back. "You let her lie in the bed she's made for herself, do you hear me? She's past saving now."

"Dad, that's –"

"The truth," he said. "Was that man here because of her? Expect she can't hold onto the paper now." His voice was no stronger, but he was lifting the covers as though he meant to climb out of the bed. "You and I, we'd best be prepared to leave Sweetwater and find a new town."

Myka tucked the covers back around him and put her hand on his shoulder until he subsided. "I don't know what will happen to the _Journal_, but he wasn't here because of that. He's a friend of hers from New York, and he's trying to help her." She would withhold the fact that Helena's friend was Henry Tremaine a while longer; her father was already too excitable.

"Don't you let him talk you into anything. It's up to a judge now to decide becomes of her," he said piously. "We'll publish the outcome, whatever it is, but that's all we'll do."

"Shsh, shsh." Myka stroked the top of his head. "When you get better, we'll figure out what happens next, but we need to get you better first." Her father's eyes began to flutter shut. She stayed with him, continuing to stroke his head with a gentle motion and urging him to sleep, until, at last, she heard a small snore. He issued a few snorts but didn't wake, pulling the covers over his head.

Tiptoeing out of his room, she began to ready herself for bed, turning down the lamp in the parlor and starting to unbutton her dress. It was late, very late, and she was exhausted, but she felt uneasy too, as if she should be continuously looking over her shoulder. Mr. Tremaine might have left, but the not-so-subtle threat he had issued still hung in the air. She suspected that he would work quickly to limit access to Helena, especially the access of anyone he deemed not to have her best interests at heart, which would be anyone, Myka sourly concluded, who didn't agree with him. She needed to talk to Helena while she still could and before he could convince her that his intention of bullying or bribing the law (whichever one was the most likely to succeed) was the only solution. Besides this was the time of night when she and Helena had been their most unguarded with each other. Perhaps Helena was awake and hoping that Myka would come to her, and if not, perhaps it was late enough for Helena to be too tired to work herself into an uproar. Despite her bold words to Pete earlier in the day about confronting Helena regardless of her mood, Myka much preferred facing a wistful or sleepy Helena. Rebuttoning her dress, Myka shrugged on a coat and silently left through the kitchen.

The jail was dark, and she almost turned around to go home, but as she hesitated, she remembered the contemptuous flare in Henry Tremaine's eyes as they argued in the _Journal_'s office. She didn't pound at the jail's door, but her knocking was firm and insistent, and she called to Pete inside. Rubbing his face, he let her in, murmuring only, "I didn't tell her you were coming." As he relighted the lamp on his desk, Myka approached the cell, not tentatively as she had done that first day but briskly, and she pulled a chair toward the bars. Helena was curled up on the cot, a blanket draped over her.

"I know you're not asleep," Myka said, "but if you don't want to talk, you can still listen." Turning her head over her shoulder, she suggested calmly to Pete, "You might like to stretch your legs for a few minutes. I won't be long with her."

Pete looked first at her and then at Helena. "I'll be nearby. Can't have her waking up the town if she decides to start yelling." He put on a coat and his hat and left the two of them alone.

Myka waited until she could no longer hear the sound of his boots on the walk. "I was out at MacPherson's ranch today. I know somebody else was in that library with him. I'm pretty sure you know it too." Helena didn't stir. "You wouldn't have killed MacPherson from behind like that. You would have wanted him to see you." That didn't evoke a response either. Myka looked at the dark hair, unbound and fanned across Helena's hunched shoulders. She wished she could reach through the bars to touch it. The ache roughening her voice, she said, "I think you saw who killed MacPherson, and for some reason I haven't been able to fathom, you're protecting him. But I'll figure out why, Helena, because if you won't protect yourself, I will."

"Isn't that why Mr. Tremaine is out here? To protect me?" Helena sat up, flinging the blanket off her and sweeping her hair away from her face. She spoke quietly, dispassionately, but her eyes, tired and red-rimmed, still managed to spark with anger as she looked at Myka. "I suppose I ultimately have Leena to thank for that. He told me the editor of the newspaper had sent him a telegram about my arrest, but you wouldn't have known where to send it. There's no need, Myka, for you to figure out who was in the library or what my motives are for keeping quiet about it, if that's what I'm doing. Henry will either succeed in buying my freedom or he won't."

"He's very confident that he can."

Helena allowed herself a slight smile. "So the two of you have met."

For a moment, Myka pictured the two of them together, Helena and Mr. Tremaine. She would be beautiful, of course, but she would be more than that; she would be imperious, queenly, the hauteur she could so easily assume amplified by his presence. She would be his lady, in the old-fashioned medieval sense of the term, and his powerful, awkward body, forged through years of hard labor, or so the popular accounts of him had it, would, next to her, acquire the grace of a courtier's. It would be as if one of those romances Myka used to devour as a child were brought to life. But Myka was no longer the child who would ask for nothing more than to wrap such a tale around her, Helena was hers, or had been hers, and she could not, would not, willingly imagine the two reunited, so she removed the picture from her mind. She didn't store it in a file drawer, she destroyed it with a determined blink of her eyes.

"He wants to use the _Journal_ to battle the New York papers and what he claims are the stories they'll spread about you."

Helena moved her arm, almost as if she were thinking of trying to reach for Myka's hand through the bars. But she reversed the direction and pushed her hand through her hair. "It would be like waving a teaspoon at someone holding a sword, but I'm sure he thinks to create some sympathy for me here. He'll learn soon enough." The slight smile became wider and more wry. Her eyes, if not gentle, were no longer angry as they refocused on Myka. "Don't worry, he can't force anything upon the _Journal_." She didn't drop her gaze and it turned keener. "You don't like him."

"I don't think he's a man who puts much weight on being liked," Myka said evasively.

"He's blunt and outspoken, but he's not unfair," Helena said. Her smile disappeared. "He could be a valuable friend, Myka, don't lose sight of that." At Myka's puzzled expression, Helena cautiously tried to elaborate. "He could be very helpful to you and your father in the future."

"Stop it!" Myka said fiercely. "Don't talk about yourself as if you're already dead or locked away in some prison."

"I'm not recanting. I have no doubt that Henry will do his best to bury my confession or divert attention from it, but I did kill MacPherson, Myka, and the Territory won't allow a crime like that to go unpunished." Helena edged forward on the cot, and this time she did reach for Myka's hands, and Myka slipped her hands through the bars to allow Helena to take them. "I'll talk with you tonight, but no more after this, please. I can't bear it."

"You're a prisoner, you can't dictate terms," Myka said, with a ghost of a smile. Anticipating the reaction to her determination to prove Helena's innocence, Myka brought one of Helena's hands to her lips. "You're going to have bear seeing me and talking to me because I'm not letting go of this. Maybe Mr. Tremaine will work miracles, but he's not interested in clearing your name. You didn't kill MacPherson, I know that. I will find the person you're protecting, Helena. You may not value your life, but I do."

Helena snatched both hands from Myka so quickly that she banged one of them against the bars in her haste. "Myka, don't. If you love me at all, let this go."

Myka looked down at her hands. She knew it was more imagination than reality, but her hands felt colder for not having Helena's touching them. "You know I can't."

Boots sounded on the walk, and Pete was pushing the door open, shuffling his feet to shake off the snow. "The jail's still standing, that's a good sign." Putting his coat on a hook, he said, "Myka, it's time for you to go home. You can talk to Mrs. Wells tomorrow."

As Myka rose from the chair, Helena said crisply, coldly, "Miss Bering won't be visiting me tomorrow." Her eyes as she raised them to Myka's were as icy as the air that Pete had let into the room.

Myka responded just as coolly. "Maybe not tomorrow, Helena, but soon." She buttoned her coat and allowed Pete to escort her out of the jail.

"You shouldn't be giving her false hope, Myka," Pete said sternly. He was teetering on the threshold, the door all but shut behind him.

"You can't give someone false hope when she doesn't believe she can be saved." She looked into his face, that loyal, dependable face and lightly touched his cheek. "Be careful around Henry Tremaine. I'm afraid he sees us as obstacles in his path, and he's not a patient man."

"I'm not afraid of him," Pete said stoutly. "I've faced tougher customers."

"No, you haven't," Myka said. "None of us have."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: You're not expecting an accurate or realistic accounting of 19th century American jurisprudence, are you? Because what's in this chapter is as made-up as everything else about my 19th century world. I hope that doesn't bother too many of you because glancing at Wikipedia entries is about all I have time for. There are a few more complications coming, and if you're wondering what happened to Myka's letters to the Wellses, that's probably going to be answered in the next chapter.**

**A/N II: Whoever among you posted the guest review about doing a fic based on White Collar, you're on, I just have to finish one of the two stories I'm currently working on first. However, being sensible is not my strong suit, so I may try to crank out a chapter one of these days.**

Helena couldn't suppress the sigh of relief that escaped her when she entered her home. She had thought to enter it with the same brisk step and shrugging off of her coat (in the summer, it was the collapsing of her parasol) that she always did, but as she had come up the walk to the front door, Henry at her elbow, her pace slowed and her steps shortened, and she momentarily closed her eyes. Although the weather hadn't moderated, the wind knifing through her coat and dress and undergarments as if they were paper, she had drawn in a deep breath, glad for the smells of wood smoke and the wool of her coat; the air in the jail was close, despite the sheriff's occasional attempts to freshen it by cracking open a window for a few minutes, permeated by the stale sweat –and worse – of its former occupants. Leena had opened the door, smiling, although it was doing little to erase the worry in her eyes, and Helena had hugged her, not caring what Henry or anyone might think about her hugging her housekeeper, and then she had sighed, her gaze lovingly touching on the floors, the walls, the staircase. She had been convinced that she wouldn't see any of it again. She had expected every day to be the one when the sheriff announced that he would be taking her to Pierre to await sentencing.

But she was home now. Not for good, of course, she needed to keep that in mind. She was out on bail, Henry having paid a king's ransom, no doubt, to convince a judge to allow a confessed killer to return home before she was sentenced. She thought bail wouldn't have been possible in her situation, and perhaps it wasn't ordinarily, but when Henry Tremaine was involved, there was very little that his money, or his influence, couldn't make possible. Entering the library, she almost ran to the fireplace, which was blazing mid-morning. She held her hands in front of it, feeling the heat beat against her palms. She had been so cold in the jail, in part because the jail was cold – she could see chinks of daylight where the wood had warped and shrunk from where it had been joined – and, in part because, just as she still lived in the room where she had surrendered Christina to Charles and was still running up the rise as Claudia's workshop exploded, she was also still huddled on the sofa in MacPherson's frigid library, waiting for the sheriff to arrive. It had been safer to stay there than to fully inhabit that cell, to stare at those bars and realize that everything she loved, everyone she loved was outside them. As long as she remained in MacPherson's library, she could remain calm, the choices that had taken her to that moment when, seeing Claudia at the side of MacPherson's body, she had known what she had to do no longer worried over and second-guessed. Most importantly, Myka wasn't in that library. So when they had burst into the jail later that morning, Leena and Myka, Helena could feel the library's walls crumbling around her and the sofa dissolving beneath her, and she could not let that happen. She had caught one glimpse of Myka's eyes, frightened, yes, but frightened for her, and she had run to the opposite end of the cell to put those eyes behind her and then she had screamed at the sheriff to take Myka away. She couldn't wrap the library around her, insulate herself from the sheriff's alternately pitying and bewildered glances and Leena's apprehensive hovering unless Myka was gone. Once Myka had been escorted out, Helena could feel the library taking shape around her once more, the softness of cushions brushing against her legs and the comfort of shelves of leather-bound books swimming into view. There was no one now to undermine her conviction that her only option had been to confess. Even Leena, whom she barely remembered telling to stay, seemed miles away although she was right in front of the bars. She had rushed through the favor she needed to ask of her, looking mainly at the floor of the cell as she spoke, fearing that if she met Leena's eyes too often, the library might again recede from her.

After that first day, she was able to maintain the illusion that she was in MacPherson's library successfully enough that when she heard Henry's voice she feared she had gone mad. She had been facing the back of the cell from her seat on the cot – it was easier to pretend that she was in the library if she couldn't see people in the room – and she had heard the sounds of the door opening and boots stamping on the floor, and then his voice. She might mistake its rasp – he had always sounded as if he had spent his day thundering at his business rivals and the city's officials – but never the command implicit in it. He was telling the sheriff that she couldn't be moved to Pierre, not while he was still trying to arrange her release. The sheriff was spluttering, but Henry simply spoke over him, emphasizing that so long as Mrs. Wells remained in the jail, he expected her to receive the best of care. A squeak, as of heels turning on the floorboards, and then the heavy, decisive tread.

She had heard it for too many years, as he entered her sitting room or bedroom, not to recognize it. She turned on the cot. The sheriff was still protesting, but Henry's eyes were fixed on her, taking in the disarray of her hair, the smudges on her dress. She was keenly aware of the distance between the image she had presented to him years ago, when she had been the most glittering of his possessions, and the image she presented now. Being the property of the law didn't give her much allowance, none really, for grooming herself or wearing clothes that she wasn't also sleeping in. Unconsciously her hand touched her hair in a futile attempt to pat back into place the strands that had worked out of the crude knot she had fashioned.

"Charlotte," he said quietly.

He was at the bars but not touching them. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and seeing him so clearly and closely for the first time in years, Helena noticed not how he seemed to dwarf the confines of the jail but rather how tired he looked, the lines in his face more pronounced and the tint to his skin gray rather than ruddy. "Mr. Tremaine," she said just as quietly, suspecting that the sheriff's sudden show of interest in his paperwork wouldn't prevent him from hearing everything they said. "I wish we were meeting again under better circumstances."

"Our first meeting wasn't all that propitious, if you recall."

There was humor in those heavy-lidded eyes, and she found herself smiling for the first time in days. "No, but you persevered."

"That hasn't changed." The teasing light in his eyes faded. "I'm working to get you released. I've sent your lawyer to Pierre to talk to the judge."

"My lawyer?"

"Yes, your lawyer." He turned his head to glance at the sheriff, who suddenly cleared his throat and noisily thumbed through a few papers. "We can talk more about this once we get you home."

He made as if to take her hand through the bars but thought better of it, bending slightly from the waist instead. Watching him walk to the door, she saw that the decisive step had more of a limp to it and those massive shoulders a slight slump. Yet the nod he gave to the sheriff was as cursory and dismissive as the acknowledgment he would give a porter carrying his bags. He might be an aging lion, Helena thought affectionately, but he was still a lion.

She hadn't seen him after that day until this morning when he had entered the jail, nearly flapping the writ in his hand under the sheriff's nose and demanding that she be released immediately. The sheriff had unfolded the document, after a long, unfriendly look at Henry, and once he had read it, he silently took the keys from his desk and unlocked the cell door. "You're free to go, for now, Mrs. Wells," he said. She had taken her coat from the end of the cot, where it had served as an extra blanket, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She spared no look back at the cell; she wasn't eager to return. As she passed the sheriff, he murmured, "Miss Bering will be happy at the news."

"You'll have to be the one to inform her, sheriff. I have no business with the _Journal_ at the moment." Her tone was cool enough to cause Henry to look at her, and she thinned her lips in frustration at her pettishness.

But Henry had said nothing, handing her up into a carriage outside the jail. It had seen better days, and Helena recognized it from the livery as she did the carriage's driver, a weatherbeaten former hand, who sometimes scrounged the odd job driving wagons or, in this case, a carriage. Henry fussed with drawing a blanket over her legs before taking his seat next to her. As the carriage had rolled down the street, people stared curiously at it, but Helena had kept her eyes on the brick two-story at the end of the street, where the irregularly tended dirt dwindled into prairie, wondering dismally if she would be like the luckless banker from whom she had bought it, hiding in fear deep in its interior, half-expecting the town to break down the doors and drag her out.

She couldn't think about the future. She would concentrate only on what was in front of her, which, at the moment, was Henry. Not literally in front of her, but beside her, also holding his hands out to the fire. "Blasted cold out here," he grumbled. "How do you stand it?"

It's easier when you have someone in your bed twined around you. No use thinking about that anymore either. "You get used to it," she said. She pulled one of the chairs closer to the fire and gestured him toward it. He waited until she took a seat on the sofa before lowering himself cautiously onto the chair. "Henry," she said, "I'm grateful beyond measure that you persuaded the judge to release me, but you shouldn't be here. There's nothing to do for me. I killed MacPherson, and I accept that I have to be punished for it." She smoothed her skirt, frowning at the wrinkles that seemed, by now, to be embedded in it. "This isn't wise. Your friends and your enemies will be questioning your judgment, coming out here to tilt at windmills on behalf of a whore." His head shot forward and he was about to interrupt, but she said, with a resigned smile, "But that's what I am to them. . . and to your wife. I can't imagine she's too pleased that you're here."

"To address your last concern, there is no Mrs. Tremaine." At Helena's bemused look, he lifted an eyebrow, no less assertively bristling than it had ever been but grayer. "I'm surprised you didn't hear about it out here. She took up with one of those portrait painters that gather like fleas on the Newport beaches. I had to divorce her or, rather, let her sue me for divorce to end the scandal. She's now Mrs. Coleman Fletcher, traipsing about Europe with her new husband and a good chunk of my money." He looked at her meaningfully. "I should have done it much sooner than I did. If I had, neither of us would be sitting where we are now."

"Henry," she said helplessly. "When I left -"

Leena's bustling arrival with a tray holding a teapot and cups and a plate of sliced bread with preserves and butter and a few strips of preserved meat - for Henry's heartier appetite, Helena presumed - prevented her from finishing what would have been a reiteration of what, deep down, she knew he recognized as well, that his having a wife had had nothing to do with why she had left. Leena was smiling more broadly than she usually did, and her bustling was, amazingly enough, exactly that, bustling. If there was a noise to be made as she poured Helena tea and gave Henry a cup of coffee, she made it, clinking the china together as if she had never handled it before and commenting on how cold Henry looked. Helena was positive that Leena even rustled her skirts, and when Leena finally straightened from her assiduous attentions to them, she said to Helena sweetly but implacably, "I'm drawing a bath for you, Mrs. Wells. I'll let you know when it's ready."

"Thank you," Helena said, understanding that the bath would be accompanied by whatever admonitions or cautions Leena was burning to give her.

Henry sipped at his coffee and then began making a sandwich of the bread and meat. "You didn't leave her behind, I see."

"Leena's far more to me than a maid or housekeeper." Helena wrapped her fingers around her cup, savoring its warmth more than the tea itself.

"Char-." Henry caught himself. "Helena," he paused. "It suits you, the name. But I liked Charlotte, too." He grinned, seeing the blush climb into Helena's cheeks. "We all reinvent ourselves at one time or another. I took the name Tremaine from one of the first men I worked for. A lot easier to say than my own name." His grin crimped into a grimace. "I talked to the sheriff and the doctor. I know what you were doing out there, with MacPherson. Did you come out here because of him? Was he your lover even when we were. . . ."

He looked at her so uncertainly, eager to be reassured that she hadn't been unfaithful to him but anxious in case her answer turned out to be the opposite, that she put her hand on his knee, giving it an affectionate squeeze. "He was not my lover, Henry. Not at any time." Her expression wry, she said, "I was at his ranch that night because he had something I wanted, and I had something he wanted. It was supposed to be a simple exchange, but it deteriorated into an argument. . . and worse." Recognizing that her touch was more intimate than their current association warranted, Helena began to lift her hand, but Henry's hand clamped over it.

"He beat you, Helena. I can see the bruises. What did you want so badly that you would surrender yourself to the likes of him?" He said softly, "I would kill any man who hurt you. Do you understand? I don't care what you did to him. He was a little man running errands for far bigger men. But those bigger men, they don't like to be balked. I know. If they take an interest in seeing you punished, this becomes a far more difficult thing to get you out of."

He was stroking the underside of her hand with his thumb, and she quickly slipped her hand from his. "Henry, that's why I want you to go home. I've told you, there's nothing to do for me now. I confessed. Having this time outside a cell, however long it lasts, is more than I expected. Go home."

"About your confession -" He impatiently cut himself off as Leena reentered the library.

"Your bath is ready, Mrs. Wells." Leena's eyes darted between the two of them, and Helena felt another blush mount in her cheeks, as if the moments when her hand had been on Henry's knee still hung in the air for Leena to see. Probably had seen before she even entered the room, her and her patterns and her Sunday school rectitude about what shape the future should take. But Helena had very little interest in her future now, or what Leena thought about it. Yet she made her excuses to Henry, who had risen sandwich in hand, and followed Leena up the stairs. Dear God, she wanted that bath.

In her bedroom, she went to her wardrobe and removed her dressing gown, saying waspishly to Leena, "You're the one who was behind his coming here. Don't scold me for some breach of decorum that hardly matters." She turned away and began to unbutton her dress.

"It's my fault that things turned out as they did. Irene had me accompany you to the Territory not only to help you but to look out for you as well. I failed." Leena approached her and put a hand on her arm. "I thought that Mr. Tremaine was your best hope for finding a way out of this situation, and I asked Myka to send a telegram to him about your arrest. I'm not going to apologize for it, Helena."

Helena didn't move away from the touch, but her gaze as it met Leena's was stony and her voice rough-edged. "You're not responsible for what I did to MacPherson and short of absconding with me out of the country, I don't see what Henry can do to free me. He can't entirely subvert the course of justice. It's a waste of his time, Leena." She removed her dress, letting it drop to the floor with distaste. It was the same dress she had worn to MacPherson's ranch. She wouldn't be wearing it again. "I just want this to be finished."

"I don't think you mean it, and, besides, it's not going to be that simple," Leena said warningly.

"And your pattern-finding or whatever it is you do is telling you that?" Helena demanded with a sarcastic smile as she stepped out of her petticoats.

"Yes." Leena gathered the dress and petticoats into a bundle. Her expression solemn, she said, "Mr. Tremaine has feelings for you still."

"You were counting on that when you had Myka send the telegram." Glancing at the clothes in Leena's arms, she said, "The petticoats just need to be cleaned but burn the dress." Shivering in the chill of the room, wearing only a thin shift, Helena tightly wrapped her dressing gown around her. "Don't worry, my feelings for him haven't changed either. Not that it matters," she finished bitterly.

"He's not for you. He wasn't before, and he isn't now, but you're in different places, and you'll feel obligated." Leena's expression changed from solemnness to a kind of entreaty, the muscles in her face tensing. "Don't let your sense of what you may owe him make your decisions for you."

"Surely you can't see my setting up house with Myka somewhere after all this?" Helena said incredulously. A bleakness settled over her face, and as she passed Leena on her way to her bath, she said, "Everything is finished here, Leena, one way or another."

Henry had left by the time she forced herself to leave the bathtub, the water no longer steaming and her skin no longer reddened by its heat, but, Leena woodenly informed her, he would be returning, later in the day, with her attorney to discuss her case. Shrugging, as if Henry's return was of no importance, Helena, feeling cleaner if not better or warmer, went to her desk in the library. There was little for her to do. She had asked Leena the day of her arrest to send a telegram to the attorney she had hired in Bismarck with instructions to "send the letters." She could only assume that he had, and with that done, she was relieved of her business interests in Sweetwater. The photograph of Charles' family caught her eye, and she allowed herself one last, lingering look at Christina before she swept the photograph into a desk drawer. Christina would turn 16 next summer. Shortly after she had turned 16, she had met Richard Pettigrew and her momentary infatuation with his chiseled chin and expensively tailored suits had had repercussions whose severity had forever marked her, no, scarred her. She could barely bring his features to mind, and she imagined that, nearly 40 now, he must look far different than he had at 24. He had been a dandy and a fool, and had she been only a little older, a little more worldly, she wouldn't have encouraged his flirtations let alone lain in wait for him in his bedroom.

It wasn't strange to think that once she had been innocent but that she had remained innocent - in certain respects - for so long. At 16, she had known what was hidden under shifts and skirts and suit coats and trousers, and she had had a fair idea of how those parts fit together, but she hadn't understood at all why, other than from a mixture of boredom and curiosity or a peculiar pent-up energy from which she only occasionally suffered, men and women were driven to engage in such relations with each other or why they ascribed so much meaning to them. Her few encounters with Richard hadn't further enlightened her, and though she learned by dint of continued exposure, especially during those first months after she had given up Christina, that she could find an obliteration of thought and memories the more frequently she engaged and the more partners she engaged with, she still hadn't understood why men and women could _want_ each other so. Her time with Alan Lawrence and Elizabeth Sloan had thoroughly schooled her in the variety and depth of such want, and she became expert at manipulating it, but she hadn't felt it herself, not in any significant way. Until she had met Monica, she hadn't known that women could want each other; the sexual relations she had had with women had been with other prostitutes and always in service to the fantasies and needs of their male clients. But even with Monica, her desire had been a secondary thing, born mainly out of Monica's desire for her.

When Leena had told her that the one she would love was still in her future, Helena hadn't thought about wanting him (despite all she had experienced, she remained conventional enough to imagine only a him), hadn't thought about him at all, hadn't even really believed her. And had Leena told her after Myka Bering left her home that summer afternoon that Myka was the one, she wouldn't have just refused to believe Leena, she would have roundly declared that Leena's gift must have deserted her. While Helena admired forthrightness and an adherence to principle, in principle, in reality she had often found the people who exemplified such virtues dreadful bores or, worse, well-meaning obstacles to her own pursuits. Myka was precisely the kind of high-minded young woman she tried to avoid. It was snobbish of her, but Helena found almost as great a detraction Myka's old, ill-fitting dresses and the fits of awkwardness that left her blushes to speak for her. How humbling it was then to realize that morning in the _Journal_'s office when Myka was working the printer's ointment into her fingers that she wanted her and wanted her with the hunger that she had always mocked before. And how painful it was now to know that she had put Myka beyond her reach.

Remembering their last conversation, when Myka had vowed to find MacPherson's real killer, Helena restlessly pushed herself away from her desk. That was Myka at her high-minded and stubborn best. Helena didn't think Myka would be able to discover that Claudia had been at the ranch, but she had already figured out that somebody else had been in the library. She shouldn't underestimate Myka's resourcefulness, she had already been surprised by it in Bismarck when Myka had drawn the attention of Mr. Kimball's secretary ably enough to allow her to escape undetected from the railroad agent's office. She wasn't sure she could fend off both Henry's and Myka's attempts to save her.

"Mrs. Wells?" Leena was using her housekeeper's voice as she entered the library. Helena swiftly looked up, aware Leena was signaling that someone was here to see her. For a moment she thought it might be Myka, and she wanted to run to wherever Myka might be waiting, the foyer, the kitchen, and hold her close, crushing to her whatever shapeless dress Myka would be wearing today and breathing into the hair that simply wouldn't stay bound. But Leena wouldn't be using her housekeeper's voice for Myka and, knowing Myka, Helena couldn't seriously entertain the thought that she would wait to be announced. "Miss Donovan is here."

She had thought about what might happen when the rumors of her arrest made it out as far as the Donovan ranch. Bracing herself for what she knew would be an unpleasant conversation, she said unhappily, "Tell her to come in."

Claudia didn't exactly storm into the library, but she was exclaiming before she even stepped over the threshold, "What do you think you're doing?" Dressed in a man's flannel shirt and denim pants that were much too big for her, the latter belted around her waist with a rope, Claudia clumped across the rug in heavy boots and dropped herself onto the sofa. "I won't let this happen -"

Helena put her hand over Claudia's mouth, smothering the rest of her tirade, and then hurried to the doors to close them. "Yes, you will," she said sternly, coming back to take a seat beside her.

"Some of my hands came back from town and said you were in jail, and then there was that story in the _Journal_ about your being questioned in connection with MacPherson's death. I tried to be quiet like you said, I did, but," Claudia's voice sank to a hoarse whisper, "I heard you confessed to his murder."

"I did," Helena said, taking Claudia's chin between her thumb and forefinger. "It's done, Claudia." She looked intently into Claudia's eyes, wanting to sweep away the hair that fell over them. Every so often, she knew, Claudia would corner Marta in the kitchen and hand her a pair of shears with the instructions to trim her hair. Long hair would get in the way of her experiments, as would skirts and lace and ribbons and all the furbelows girls her age were supposed to wear, or so Claudia maintained. But it was such pretty hair, Helena thought wistfully. If the day came when Claudia decided to let it grow out - it wouldn't matter, Helena scolded herself, she wouldn't be there to pretend that she was shocked by the decision.

Claudia's eyes remained mutinous. "I know you didn't kill him, and I'm going to tell Pete that I was there."

Helena put her wistfulness away and hardened her face as she stared at Claudia. "No, you won't. He wouldn't listen to you, no one would. Everyone would think you were making something up to save me." Seeing a skeptical smirk stretching Claudia's lips, Helena introduced a steeliness into her tone that had Claudia straightening her back and blinking at her. "You're just a silly girl who dresses up in men's clothes and wastes her father's money on ridiculous experiments. That's what this town thinks of you. The fact that you willingly associate with me makes them think even less of you. Telling people that I wasn't the one who killed MacPherson would only confirm my guilt in their eyes. If you truly want to help me, Claudia, you will keep your mouth shut about that night. Do you understand?"

Claudia slowly nodded. Her voice small, she asked, "Is that what you really think of me, that I'm some stupid kid who ought to grow up and get married and raise babies?"

Helena didn't want to look at the hurt in Claudia's eyes or the wounded downturn of her mouth, but it was better that Claudia was angry with her than seeking to help her. "I think you could be doing more useful things than littering the prairie with the results of your failed experiments. If you want to live up to your family's name and have a voice in the Territory, putting on a dress would be a start. Giving up the company of a whore would also help. If you insist upon being a child, Claudia, people will treat you as one."

"Thanks for being honest," Claudia said sarcastically, bounding up from the couch. "I don't want to slow your rush to the hangman's noose since you seem hellbent on putting it around your neck, but if you change your mind about how helpful I can be, just holler. I may be listening." She stomped out of the library, slamming the doors behind her.

Helena laid down on the sofa, covering her eyes with her arm and wishing it was a cold compress instead. On the credenza behind the desk, there was a bottle of brandy and a collection of snifters. She hadn't been tempted to ease her sorrows with an overindulgence since the night of the picnic when she had seen Myka kiss the sheriff. It wasn't past two in the afternoon, but she was ready for brandy.

She heard the doors open, and it was Leena's normal voice, quiet, casual, and just now, faintly inquiring. "First you close the doors and then, minutes later, Claudia flies out, her face like a thundercloud."

"She wanted to help. She can't." Helena propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Leena as she walked slowly in front of the fire.

"And that necessitated closing the doors?" Leena stopped and stared into the fire. "When are you going to tell me what happened at MacPherson's ranch?"

"You know all there is to know."

"I know only what you've said, but I suspect there was more to it than you're willing to tell me." Leena smiled at her. "I am your friend, Helena. A sense of duty alone can't answer for why I've been with you for the past three years."

"Past eight," Helena corrected.

"When you lived with Mr. Tremaine, at least I had time apart from you." Leena smiled wider to take any sting from her words.

Helena got up from the sofa and went to the credenza, pouring brandy into the snifters. She gave Leena one of the glasses and cradled the other in her hand. "All I need to know is that you and Myka and Claudia will be fine," she said into the glass. "That's the only fortune-telling I need to hear. Can you tell me that?"

"You still don't understand," Leena said with a sigh.

"About the mechanics of your gift, no," Helena said impatiently.

"That's not what I meant. As impossible as you are, you're important to each of us, and none of us will be fine if you're imprisoned or worse." Leena's smile had returned, but it trembled at the edges. "For the first time in as long as I can remember, I see patterns that I try not to read because I don't want to know. I don't want to know, Helena."

Helena downed the brandy. You had to feel a certain luxury, of time, of expectations, to let it warm in your hand and drink it slowly. You had to believe that the future was simply a door that you hadn't yet opened and that what was beyond was different from the present only in that it was better. But for her, the door was already open, and all that was beyond it was darkness.

XXXXXXXXX

It was after dinner when Henry returned, a dinner that Helena had eaten alone, Leena having been called out to tend to a sick child on one of the nearby farms. She had pushed around the vegetables and the little bit of venison on her plate - oftentimes Leena was paid with game - and drunk two glasses of wine. Consequently she thought she was seeing double when she opened the front door to see two men on the step until she remembered that Henry had said he was bringing with him "her" lawyer.

Even on the step, with just her and Henry for an audience, her attorney struck a dramatic pose, a walking stick thrust in front of him, both of his hands clasped on its knob as if it were a stake he was prepared to drive into the ground to claim possession. Of what, Helena wasn't certain, as neither her home nor what assets remained under her control would be enough to pay any attorney Henry had hired. A shock of white hair, springing from his brow like a rooster's comb, capped a frame as tall as Henry's was broad, and she almost expected to see a cape draped around his shoulders, as if he were a hero, or villain, from a stage melodrama.

"This is Malachi Ross," Henry rumbled an introduction as Helena welcomed them in. "Best damn attorney in the United States, if you'll pardon my language."

Mr. Ross didn't betray any disagreement with Henry's assessment, bowing with a theatrical flourish over Helena's hand. "It's unfortunate that we have to meet like this, Mrs. Wells, but I assure you you'll find no one who will work more diligently to see your name cleared." He had a voice suited for the stage as well, a rich baritone that easily filled the foyer. It had a caressing quality that Helena found herself responding to, wanting instinctively to place her trust in him.

Instead she cocked her head skeptically, as if to break the spell his voice had woven, and, freeing the hand over which he seemed to have folded himself, she gestured toward the library. "Clearing the name of a killer who's already confessed?" She gave him a doubtful glance. "Please warm yourselves. There's brandy behind the desk."

"Where's your housekeeper?" Henry asked, displeased. As Helena reached for his coat, he held onto it, taking Mr. Ross's as well. Hanging them on the coat rack, he said softly, "There used to be a time when you ran a house full of servants."

Just as softly she said, "James ran a house full of servants. He just let me wave my hand a few times." As Henry chuckled, she raised her voice to its normal volume. "Leena's healing skills are in more demand than the doctor's. She's with a sick child this evening."

Henry touched her back lightly as she entered the library. Gliding away from him, she noticed that Mr. Ross was at the credenza pouring a brandy. He sniffed it appreciatively. "The brandy, this library. Far more cultivated than one would expect in this town. I'm curious, Mrs. Wells, about what brought you here."

"So am I," Henry said, settling into a chair and crossing his legs.

"A friend wanted me to look into some business interests here, especially the railroad and plans for running a branch line through another town," Helena said. Which was the truth. Mrs. Frederic had had a keen interest in the goings-on in the Territory, particularly as they involved James MacPherson. "I hadn't intended to stay, but, before I knew it, I was the owner of the _Journal_ and the Rusty Spur."

"You stayed to run that rag of a newspaper and a broken-down saloon?" Henry asked incredulously.

"I owed my friend a tremendous debt, and the negotiations over the branch line took much longer to develop than anyone expected. What had been planned as a short visit turned into a more significant commitment of time."

Henry didn't bother to disguise his hurt. It had seemed sudden and inexplicable to him, her leaving, although Leena had warned her years before that she and Mrs. Frederic would ask of her something she wouldn't want to do when the time came. And Leena had been right, as usual, Helena had had no strong desire to leave Henry or the life she had created with him, even though she also couldn't deny that she had started to grow restive as her thoughts centered with increasing frequency on Christina. But Mrs. Frederic had counted on her continued sense of obligation, and Mrs. Frederic, like Leena, was rarely wrong. So she and Leena had traveled out here, and she had swallowed her dismay at how small and dusty and inhospitable Sweetwater was, hoping that she and Leena could quickly put right whatever it was that had gone wrong. But nothing got done quickly in Sweetwater, and Helena had felt she was withering more and more with each summer that passed. She feared that if she stayed long enough, she would dry up like a milkweed pod. But then the Berings came to town. Since the moment Myka had stormed into her kitchen after the grass fire, her life here had taken on a depth and intensity that made her think she had only been marking time during her years with Henry. In Myka's presence, it occurred to her that as much as she might want to believe that she had been exiled to this sorry little backwater, in actuality, she had been adrift everywhere else.

"And MacPherson?" Mr. Ross probed, as he came to stand before the fire.

"I didn't know him before I arrived here, but I discovered that he was the one behind the plans to move the railroad spur to another town. For the good of Sweetwater, I felt I had to oppose him." There was no need to tell them of Leena's ability to see the future or her fears that, left unchecked, MacPherson would become a great danger; her own story about looking into business interests here on behalf of a friend would be difficult for them to believe. She had given up a rich, doting lover and a pampered life in his mansion to pander rotgut and girls to cowboys?

"It sounds like there was money to be made in moving the railroad spur. Why be so short-sighted as to object?" Henry asked, lacing his fingers over his knee.

Obviously he wasn't convinced. "Because it would be making a profit from others' misfortune, namely, the people of this town," Helena said crisply.

"I don't remember you being so concerned with the welfare of others when you lived in New York," he said dryly.

"Living in New York hardly encourages compassion for your fellow man."

With thinly veiled impatience, Mr. Ross said, "To return to MacPherson. The two of you must not always have been at loggerheads." He coughed delicately. "You were . . . intimate. . . with him that night at the ranch. The prosecution will be quick to point that out."

"Prosecution?" Helena's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "You talk as if there were going to be a trial. I confessed, Mr. Ross. My guilt has already been established."

He exchanged a glance with Henry, who raised his hands helplessly. "Mrs. Wells, given MacPherson's brutish treatment of you while you were at his home and, no doubt, the ferocious shock you must have felt upon discovering his body, I can hardly believe that you were in full possession of your faculties when you made your confession to the sheriff. Thankfully the judge in Pierre agreed with me and consented to the withdrawal of your confession."

His voice was so soothing, so reasonable that Helena let it flow over her before she realized the import of what he had said. "You withdrew my confession," she said wonderingly, "because my feminine sensibilities were overcome by the violence of his death." He nodded and smiled with satisfaction at their mutual understanding. Her voice growing sharp, she said, "Yes, I was intimate with Mr. MacPherson that evening. Has Mr. Tremaine told you what I did before I ran a saloon and a newspaper? I was a whore, Mr. Ross. Most people think I still am one. I exchange sexual favors for money or other things of value, and I was at MacPherson's ranch because he had something I wanted, and I was willing to crawl into his bed and suffer his touch to get it. Unfortunately, he saw fit not to pay me for my services. I didn't take that lightly."

Malachi Ross's smile stiffened and his eyes, the avuncular blue of a grandfather in a sentimental illustration, began to lose their mildness. "Helena," Henry implored from his chair, "let Malachi be your guide here. Without a dismissal of your confession, our hands were tied, and the judge certainly wouldn't have been willing to grant you bail."

Her eyes still fixed on Mr. Ross, who had wandered from the fireplace to examine a book he took from a shelf, Helena said, "Do I seem like some hothouse flower? My sensibilities are tougher than you think, and I assure you that I was in full possession of my faculties when I crushed MacPherson's skull."

For a moment, Helena thought he hadn't listened to her. He seemed absorbed by the contents of the book in his hand, which, best as she could make out, was a copy of Richardson's _Pamela_. Now there had been a clever girl, wielding virtue like a weapon. Instead, Helena had worn her disreputableness like a banner, and look where that had gotten her. Mr. Ross closed the book with a snap, putting it back on the shelf. Taking a sip of his brandy, where it had rested, all but forgotten, on her desk, he bent his head, seeming to ponder a thought he was deciding whether to share. Helena pursed her lips but congratulated herself for not rolling her eyes at such a ham-handed display. Obviously he was about to launch into an oration, about justice or the longueurs of a trial or uncooperative clients, all with the object of shaming her into compliance. Consequently, she couldn't hide her surprise when he crouched in front of the chair she occupied, his eyes cold, and said with a brusqueness which made of that sonorous baritone something hard and cutting, "In my presence, you can say whatever you like, that you were out at MacPherson's ranch to service him and all his cowboys, that you beat in his skull and then drank his blood." Gesturing toward the windows, he continued, "But when you're out there, mingling with the townspeople, you will have nothing to say about what happened that night. From now until the trial starts, you will be a model citizen, you will dress modestly and attend Sunday services, you will give candy to children and alms to beggars. You will not visit the Rusty Spur for any reason. Am I making myself clear?"

"If you think all that will fool the town into believing I'm innocent, you're sadly mistaken," Helena said grimly.

"You don't have to fool the town. You have to fool twelve men," Mr. Ross countered, rising to his feet. "Twelve men whose knowledge of you will be what they read in the papers and hear from their neighbors." Turning to Henry, he said, "Speaking of papers, have you gotten that editor, Bering, in line?"

Henry shook his head in disgust. "I've talked to his daughter, a priggish young woman who insists that the paper must remain impartial."

Helena couldn't help but let an affectionate smile overtake her face. There weren't very many people who could stand up to him. Affecting a nonchalance she didn't feel, Helena said, "She's not priggish, she's principled. That's why you find her an annoyance."

Henry only grunted at the barb. "I talked to the publisher of the paper in Pierre. He'll print whatever we give him. We don't need the _Journal_."

"We need to ensure that the _Journal_ doesn't fall under the sway of MacPherson's backers. It won't take them long to gear their machinery up, especially once they know I'm out here." Mr. Ross scowled and fluffed his whiskers, which were as white and luxuriant as his hair.

"The _Journal_ won't fall under anyone's sway, and the more you push the Berings, the more obstinate they'll become." Helena looked first at Henry and then at Mr. Ross. "The paper's coverage will be fair, of that I can assure you."

"We don't want fair," Mr. Ross sighed, "we want a paper that will hold you up for view as if you were the Virgin Mary." He took another sip of his brandy and pulled out his pocket watch. "It's late, Henry, we should be going." He finished the rest of his brandy and put the snifter back on the desk. "With your permission, Mrs. Wells, I'd like to visit you tomorrow. We need to start working on a defense strategy."

"I was the one there overnight, I was the one everyone saw next to his body. I don't know how you strategize your way out of that." Helena wearily pushed herself up from her chair. She led them out of the library and took their coats from the coat rack.

"That's what Henry's paying me for." Mr. Ross bundled himself into his coat, turning up his collar and shivering in anticipation of the cold. His eyes were merry once more, and Helena thought he might serve as someone's idea of a Santa Claus, if he were only stouter, but she wasn't misled by the good humor in his face, it was as much a part of his costume as his walking stick and crest of white hair. "From what I've been able to gather, he wasn't well liked here. I'm sure there were others who wanted to kill him. All we have to do is find someone with the same inclination and the means to arrive at his ranch the same evening." Tugging on his gloves, he said, "Servants often come in handy in these cases. Frequently they're ill paid and ill treated, and they almost always have unfettered access to their employers." At Helena's look of distaste, he said, "We need to point the finger of suspicion away from you, and the best way to do that is to point it at someone else. It's up to the officers of the court whether they follow the path we've shown them."

Chilled at what he was suggesting, Helena said, "I'm afraid you'll find no one among his servants incautious enough to let you stand him in my place. I wasn't on the best of terms with them. I had been out at the ranch before, and his staff have no reason to think of me fondly."

At that, both men lifted their heads, and Mr. Ross said, "You were out at his ranch before?"

Helena ushered them to the door. "We can talk about that tomorrow." Smiling sardonically at Mr. Ross, she said, "You really will earn every penny Henry is paying you."

Henry lingered on the step as Mr. Ross began to stride down the walk, his walking stick rapping briskly against the stone. "A double whiskey awaits us in my room, Tremaine," he called out.

"Henry," she said, looking at him intently, "I will not stand for his putting MacPherson's murder on an innocent person."

Henry's eyes were practically closed, as if he were dozing standing up, but she caught the movement beneath the lids and saw the bottom rims of his irises slide as he directed his glance toward her, and she felt like a gazelle that had gamboled too close to a lion. The lids flickered up, and she half-expected his mouth to open and snap her in half. "He wins at any cost. That's why I hired him. I will happily spend my fortune to buy you out of this mess. And if that's not enough, I have other options in mind. You will not spend a day in prison, I promise you, Helena. You may pinch your nose at what he suggests, but I won't." He didn't try to kiss her hand or press it or make any other demonstrative gesture, in fact, he walked away from her without another word, but she felt two chains about to encircle her, one of the law's making and the other of Henry's.

As promised, Mr. Ross showed up the following day to strategize. And the next, and the next after that. Henry accompanied him each time, generally remaining silent in the chair he had adopted as his own and which he pulled close to the fire, the only sound coming from him his quiet drawing on a cigar. Helena knew she ought to be grateful that she didn't have to put a spittoon in the library, but she hated the fug that began to develop in the room as the result of Henry's cigars and Mr. Ross's panatellas. Leena served coffee and, in the afternoons, little sandwiches and cookies, but otherwise she avoided entering the library, and Helena would have much preferred to stay in the kitchen herself. But Mr. Ross's questions were endless. She lost track of how many times he asked her to describe everything she could remember about the evening, what she had said, what she had done, what MacPherson had said and done. She suspected that he knew she was leaving something out because he was particularly curious about why she had gone down to the library and why she had stayed there as long as she had before alerting the servants. She had thought, fleetingly, of mentioning that someone had visited the ranch after she arrived, the man Claudia had said was responsible for killing MacPherson, but were she to do that, Mr. Ross would have even more questions, quite likely about things she wouldn't know, and in the few days that she had been subject to his interrogation, she had grown to respect how very sharp he was. Even the slightest discrepancy between her accounts of what had happened didn't escape his attention, and she realized as she dully embarked on what had to be the fiftieth retelling that he was hammering into her the story that she might have to tell were she to be called to testify before the jury. She couldn't allow herself to say anything that he might be able to unravel sufficiently enough to see Claudia behind it. While she was confident that no one in Sweetwater would believe Claudia even were she to parade up and down the main street shouting that Helena couldn't have killed MacPherson, Malachi Ross would, and he wouldn't hesitate to cast her as the killer. So when he asked if she knew whether there had been others at the ranch that evening, she shook her head. Maybe MacPherson's servants would tell him a different story, but she would be surprised if they volunteered that someone else had come calling on MacPherson; speaking out would be drawing attention to themselves, and no one, from housekeeper to parlor maid, wanted to be singled out in a murder case. Besides, they would have little reason to doubt that she had killed their employer as she had threatened to kill him before. When she told Mr. Ross about her rampage through MacPherson's house after the grass fire, Henry had been so upset he had thrown his half-smoked cigar in the fire, and Mr. Ross had poured himself a brandy, although it was only ten in the morning.

One morning, before Henry and Mr. Ross were due to arrive, and Helena had been attempting, fruitlessly, to beat the smell of tobacco from the cushions of the chairs and the sofa, Leena had interrupted her, telling her that Freddie Newcomb wanted to see her. Hearing his full name, Helena couldn't immediately place him, causing Leena to quirk her mouth and say with heavy emphasis, "_Freddie_ from the Spur." Helena had reddened. She always thought of him as Freddie, or when he had to have another name, Freddie from the Spur. He had shambled in, much like a tame bear, but he was wearing a suit and he was freshly shaved. Helena had never seen him in a suit or shaved, and she was shocked that his linen was clean. The suit was too small for him, and clearly he wasn't its first owner, but she was touched that he had made such an effort for her.

He held a crumpled paper in his hand. "You're giving me the Spur?"

"I'm not giving it to you, Freddie," she said dryly, inviting him to sit down. "It's a contract for deed."

He bobbed his head in understanding. "You'll get every payment on time, Mrs. Wells. And I'll treat the girls good."

"I know you will," she said gently. "You're the only one I would ever consider selling the Spur to."

He rubbed his knees nervously. "I know why you're doing this. I know about your troubles and all, but if you ever want the Spur back. . . ." His voice trailed off, and he looked at her, his eyes shining. Helena realized, with a pang, that he meant it. He would give up the Spur were she to ask for it. She waited until she could make her own voice steady. "It's yours, Freddie. I won't try to reclaim it."

One hand left his knee to rub his neck. Hesitantly he said, "I believe in you, Mrs. Wells, no matter what you done. He wasn't a good man, and the world's not missing anything with him no longer in it. That's what I'll say if anyone asks me."

She resisted the impulse to wince. And he was one of her supporters. She smiled as he lumbered to his feet. "I need to get the Spur ready." The crumpled paper was now a ball in his fist, and she could only hope it was the copy of the contract the attorney would have directed him to keep. "When it comes time to do the books, would you mind if -"

"I'll be happy to look over the books with you until you get a feel for them."

He shot her a grin and walked with his rolling, splayed-feet gait toward the foyer, Helena following and feeling as if he was not just a tame bear but a tame bear on a leash, dragging her with him. She watched as he headed in the direction of the Spur, which she could make out from the other buildings if she angled her head and squinted enough. She chose not to. In some ways the Spur was a holdover from her former life, and no matter what the outcome of her trial was, she wouldn't be a whore again. Not ever. But she would visit the Spur at least one more time, despite Mr. Ross's injunction not to, since she needed to talk to the girls about the change in ownership, although she suspected that there would be little regret among them. They had respected her, but they loved Freddie.

The Berings would have received their letter by now, and she knew Myka's reaction would be nothing like Freddie's. Myka could be as stiff-necked as her father and not welcoming of what might be considered an act of charity. Pulling her shawl tighter around her at the thought, she returned to the smelly warmth of the library. But Myka didn't visit her that day, didn't visit her all that week, and the weekend passed without Helena seeing her, although she suffered through Pastor Wallace's sermon that Sunday, which seemed to dwell more than usual on the agonies awaiting unrepentant sinners. She endured the service and the stares of the congregation by keeping her head bowed over a bible she had found tucked away on a far shelf in the library.

Henry and Mr. Ross had briefly returned to New York. Henry had offered only "business" as the reason for their departure, although Helena thought that they probably had had as much of Sweetwater as they could take. In addition to gas lights and central heating, New York offered a multitude of distractions, many more than the Spur's greasy cards and cheap whiskey. Henry must have sorely missed the theaters; he had mentioned several times that another play of Mr. Brownlee's he had produced had recently opened to great acclaim, or so Mr. Brownlee had told him via telegram. In the Territory, you needed to travel to Minneapolis or St. Paul to see a show. But they were soon back, and the daily interrogations resumed.

Helena was going over the history of her interactions with MacPherson, when she heard a door slam and then a series of quick steps, as if someone were running. She turned, wondering what had alarmed Leena, when she saw Myka stalk into the library. The wind had tossed her hair, and it was completely unbound, the curls springing down her shoulders. Her face was red with cold, and her eyes were tearing, but whether it was from the cold or fury, Helena couldn't tell. Her motions jerky, Myka was working ancient-looking woolen mittens off her hands. "We need to talk," she said abruptly. Finally looking at the two men who were staring at her in surprise, her mouth tensing fractionally as she recognized Henry, Myka said quietly, "If you'll please excuse us, this can't wait."

Helena hadn't seen Myka this angry since she had come to her house the night of the grass fire, and she had forgotten that an enraged Myka didn't shout or scream, she grew silent as if it were taking all her energy to keep her anger in. Helena obediently followed her from the library to the kitchen, and as Myka spun to face her, Helena couldn't keep from glancing at the kitchen table and remembering how they had almost collapsed on top of it, Myka's fingers thrusting into her and Myka's breath rapid and harsh against her ear. This encounter most likely wouldn't end the same way, although she wasn't certain that if Myka were to lunge for her, as she had then, that she wouldn't let herself be taken against the wall or on the table, the two men in her library be damned.

"I didn't open it for days, you know," Myka said, wiping at her eyes. "I thought it was a lawyer dunning us for some bill we hadn't paid, and it was too much to handle. I've been trying to run the _Journal_ and tend to my father and not worry about you. But I opened it today and saw that you had given us, me, the paper. And then I heard that you had given the Spur to Freddie." She was shaking as she hissed, "What were you thinking, Helena?"

"Perhaps I was thinking to ensure that my businesses went to people I trusted, should something happen to me. Perhaps I was thinking that, to a small degree, I could look out for you, guarantee you a home, of sorts, and an income, of sorts," Helena said angrily, unhappily aware that her voice was rising. "And as a small matter of correction, I did not give the Spur to Freddie. It actually produces income, and I'm not so foolish or sentimental as to give that up without getting recompensed. But the _Journal_," she shrugged. "Sanderson could barely make it turn a profit, and he was a far better salesman than you or your father. It's not much of a gift, Myka."

Myka sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself. "You set that up when we were in Bismarck, didn't you? That's why you stayed behind the extra day. I wondered. . . ." She lifted her hands to her hair, as though she might begin pulling it from her head. "Do you know what you've done? Do you know how bad this will look?" She began pacing the width of the kitchen. When Helena didn't answer, she stopped, fear and disbelief in equal measure in her expression. "Everyone in town is talking about it. Freddie must have told every man who came into the Spur that he's the new owner, and someone will eventually find out about the _Journal_. Helena, it looks as if you were planning to murder MacPherson, this signing away of everything. People will think you were preparing for the worst."

"I was preparing for the worst, I was afraid he might kill me," Helena said, sinking down on a chair at the table. "I was afraid of how violent he might become if we were able to block the moving of the branch line. And then when he was killed, I was afraid you would have nothing if I went to prison, that the Spur would be sold and the girls maltreated. I wasn't thinking about how it would look in terms of my guilt or innocence."

"You should have been," Malachi Ross said from behind her. He nodded toward Myka as he joined Helena at the table. "She has a good head on her shoulders." He fingered his whiskers. "What else have you done?"

"Nothing," Helena lied. "My other business interests are being managed by my partner. The Spur and the paper are the only interests I've divested of." Reluctantly making the introductions, she said, "Mr. Ross, this is Miss Myka Bering, she assists her father with the _Journal_. Myka, Mr. Ross is my attorney."

As Mr. Ross gallantly rose to offer Myka a little bow, Myka looked at Helena, her mouth upturned in a bitter twist. "Your attorney? Well, I'm glad someone was able to make you see reason." As Mr. Ross sat down, Myka said, "I've read accounts of the trials you've won. You have a very impressive record, Mr. Ross. Helena is fortunate to have you and Mr. Tremaine on her side." He preened at her compliment. Myka glanced from him to Helena, her lips still crooked in a smile that wasn't a smile. She slipped through the door before Helena could say anything, and Helena stood up from the table so quickly she knocked her chair over.

Leaving Mr. Ross gape-mouthed behind her, she chased Myka halfway across the yard, stumbling in the snow, before Myka came to a stop. "You can't just shout at me like that and leave." Helena tried a smile of her own, but there was something so wounded in those pale green eyes that Helena felt her smile turn as lopsided as Myka's. "I know I've treated you horribly, and there are things. . . there are things that I still can't tell you, but I do care for you, Myka, you must know that, and I was hoping. . . I was hoping that you might take my signing over of the _Journal _to you and your father as something, very small and very inadequate, I know, toward making amends." There were other things she wanted to say more, but these were the things she could say and the things that Myka might possibly be willing to hear. But given how Myka was setting her jaw, Helena thought that even these words were too much for her to bear.

"You'd better get inside before you freeze to death" was all Myka had to say before she started trudging toward the street again.

Helena was cold and she felt the snow that had gotten into her shoes as she had run after Myka begin to melt. She wriggled her toes uncomfortably. She didn't dare tell Myka now that she had also redrawn the trust agreements which held the Wells' mills and factories, making Myka her trustee. Should she go to prison, which she fully expected to do despite Henry's blustering to the contrary, Myka would be in charge of her family's fortune, what there remained of it, and, correspondingly, of Christina's future. No matter how angry Myka was with her, she didn't want anyone else looking after her daughter.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I thought this was going to be a shorter chapter than it turned out to be, but I'm going with it, and if I need to, I'll continue to tinker with it. I said there were going to be more complications and there are, and by "complications" I mean stuff getting in the way of Helena and Myka finding their way back to each other. But they will. . . eventually. **

In the mornings, her father's constant coughing would have woken her up except for the fact that she was already awake. She would go to bed late, after cleaning up the kitchen, coaxing or, if necessary, browbeating her father into drinking the tea she had prepared with Leena's herbs, and listing what needed to be done for the _Journal_ the next day. It was in her bed that she would think about Helena, and it was rare when those thoughts would relax her enough to go to sleep. She tried to keep the thoughts in her Helena drawer, but it was harder to do at night, when there was so little to stop her from opening the drawer. Most frequently she would think about seeing Helena in the jail cell or, almost as bad, seeing Helena at the kitchen table, a bewildered expression on her face as she only slowly realized what selling the Spur and signing over the _Journal_ would suggest to others. Sometimes Myka tried to think about the nights she had spent in Helena's bed, but that left her feeling just as miserable. Although it had been only a few weeks since she had last climbed the stairs to Helena's bedroom, it felt much longer, and the Myka she would recall kissing and caressing the length of Helena's body was a Myka she couldn't fully inhabit. She wasn't sure why; perhaps it was simply too painful, given the uncertainty of Helena's future, or perhaps she wasn't the same woman she had been a few weeks ago, all that had happened since that Saturday night having changed her in a way she didn't yet understand. It was easiest to think about Helena before they became lovers, before she had realized what the jumble of fascination, exasperation, and, sometimes, jealousy that stirred during their encounters had meant. So she would try to train her thoughts on those times early in their relationship when they had chatted about the books she had borrowed from Helena's library or exchanged small talk when Helena came to the _Journal_. Eventually she would fall asleep, only to wake up before dawn, an image of Helena fading in her mind, and the rooms echoing with the sounds of her father's shuddering inhalations as one coughing fit succeeded another.

Occasionally Leena would stop by to check on his progress, although Myka's father had begun to actively resist her attempts to examine him. Myka couldn't tell if his flinching and protests were in response to a woman touching him so intimately and authoritatively or to a woman of Leena's color touching him. She blushed at his behavior and apologized to Leena once they left his bedroom, but Leena dismissed Myka's embarrassment, saying with a quiet ruefulness, "I've seen far worse reactions." Leena thought he was mainly over the infection, but the wracking coughs and his persistent fatigue concerned her. "He needs a warmer climate," she said, giving Myka another packet of herbs.

"Don't we all," Myka said with a little laugh. It happened to be even colder than usual that day and the heat provided by the stoves in the kitchen and parlor barely radiated beyond their iron bellies. Myka was tempted to wear her mittens indoors although that would severely impede her laying out of the next edition of the _Journal_.

But Leena was serious. "Are there family or friends who live farther south whom he could visit? A few weeks away from the snow and the cold would be a boon."

"My sister lives in Kansas City," Myka offered. "But they still get snow."

"It's warmer than here," Leena said, seeming to shrink inside her dress as if their talking about the cold only made it colder.

When Myka raised the idea of his visiting Tracy, her father only lifted his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. That was his response to most things these days. He would leave his bed for a few hours, moving with more effort than taking the few steps to the kitchen table or the parlor's sofa should require, and stare at the pages of a book or into his coffee cup, only absently responding to Myka's attempts to draw him into a conversation, before shuffling back into his bedroom. He showed little interest in the _Journal_, apparently content to let Myka manage the entire process, from soliciting advertisements to running the press. She had hesitated to tell him that Helena had given them the _Journal_, sure that the news would send him into an hours-long rage. She imagined her father dragging himself to Helena's house and tearing the letter to bits in front of her face, coughing uncontrollably as he did so. But when she finally did tell him, he had only muttered, "She had to do something with it. Can't very well publish from a prison."

The only good thing about the change in her father's behavior was that he had slowed, if not stopped, his drinking. He wouldn't begin nipping from a bottle until late in the afternoon, and he was too exhausted of an evening, though he wouldn't willingly admit it, to go to the Spur. Myka was reluctant to press the issue of his visiting Tracy, but in a letter to her sister, she mentioned that he had been complaining about how long it had been since he had seen his grandchildren. He hadn't made any such complaint, and Tracy would skeptically smile as she read it, but Myka hoped that a few carefully inserted sentimental references might prompt Tracy to invite him to visit, out of guilt, if for no other reason.

But the careful planning and the stealthily dropped reminders that he was Tracy's father too weren't needed. One night, after a coughing fit so violent that he fell to his knees and Myka saw blood on the handkerchief that he held to his mouth, she decided not to wait for Tracy, with or without a nudge, to invite him. The blood had come from a tear in his lip, not his lungs, but she wouldn't risk another repetition of the scene. The next morning she sent a telegram to her sister, advising her that their father needed to winter somewhere more hospitable to his health than Dakota Territory, and Tracy had sent her a curt wire back that she would ready a room. A few days later, Myka and her father took a hired carriage to the railroad station, and as she and the driver helped him down, she noted with dismay how palsied his grip on their arms was and how he struggled to take in a breath, his nostrils flared, his mouth open. She carried his valise for him and helped him board, settling him in a first class compartment that she knew was more expensive than she could afford. It had taken all her pin money and some of their money for essentials as well. But she would be preparing meals only for herself now, and she reflected that shorting herself a few meals wasn't that big of a sacrifice to make. The winter menu in the Bering kitchen wasn't appetizing, consisting primarily of root vegetables of one kind or another and the very infrequent bit of preserved meat. If she didn't see another potato until spring, it would be too soon. After giving him his valise and kissing his cheek, she stepped into the aisle, when, with more strength that she knew he had, he clutched at her arm.

"I've not been a good father to you, Myka." He wasn't coughing yet, but she could hear the faint wheeze between his words that signaled an attack was on its way.

She said soothingly, "You're being too hard on yourself. It wasn't easy raising two girls without Mother's help." He had been a good father to her, once, but it had been so long ago that any protests she might have raised to that self-assessment would have sounded false. She wanted to say whatever would keep him calm and the coughing at bay.

"You raised yourself and Tracy," he countered morosely. "I've not been a good father or a good man." He looked up at her with the bleariness she was used to seeing every morning, as if all he was looking for was a bottle and all he could see was her. Then his gaze sharpened, and she was reminded, for a moment, of the man he had been, focused, observant, quick to size up a person or situation. "I'm not a good man," he repeated, "but you're a good woman, Myka, like your mother." His eyes began to grow cloudy, and he lifted his hand from her arm to his mouth as though to stifle an incipient cough. "Sweet girl but with a core of iron," he said, his voice trailing away, and Myka wasn't sure if he was referring to her or her mother.

She patted his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry. Close your eyes and rest. You'll be back before you know it." She sounded too cheery, but her father's judgment of his failures, touched with not a little self-pity, and his calling her a "good woman" worried her. He was acting as if he thought he wouldn't see her again, as if he were being sent off to die rather than to stay with his youngest daughter and her children. Fixing him with a hard stare, she said mock sternly, "You're not going to be at Tracy's for more than a few weeks. Just until you get better. It's not going to be that bad."

He gave her a weak smile. "I'll remind them all why they don't have me visit more often."

The conductor had entered the compartment at the other end. He gave Myka a warning jerk of his head. "Dad, I need to go, the train's about to leave." She bent down and kissed his cheek again. "See you soon," she whispered.

He didn't try to stop her from going this time, but she hadn't gotten very far down the aisle before he said stridently, his words punctuated by coughs, "Don't you go trying to save Helena Wells while I'm gone. She's not worth the tip of your little finger."

She gave no sign that she had heard him.

She was too busy over the next several days to recognize that his dour silences had been a voice of sorts filling their rooms and his slumped, sullen presence a presence nonetheless. Christmas came and went and the only note she took of it, other than to attend the Christmas Eve service at the church, was to share a few peppermint sticks with Pete when he stopped by on Christmas Day. The fact that she had seen, among the few toys in the general store, a tiny carved horse that had reminded her of Dantes, that she had bought it and left it in a box at Helena's kitchen door late, very late, one evening had nothing to do with anything. In fact, the next day she had forgotten that she even bought it, or so she pretended to herself.

By the time the new year arrived, she had grown lonely enough that she began to look forward to days when Mrs. Grabel came to help with the housework. Mrs. Grabel issued a trumpet-like snort when Myka informed her that her father had gone to visit his other daughter. "Weak in the lungs, I could tell," she said with self-satisfaction. She said other things as she scraped the stoves or washed the floors, loudly enough for Myka to hear them in the _Journal_'s office, such as how it wasn't right for a young, unmarried woman to live by herself and how men worth their salt didn't expect their daughters to run their businesses for them. When her affronted sense of propriety became too much for Myka to bear, Myka would leave on a real or invented errand for the _Journal_, wondering how sad her life had become that she could ever look forward to seeing Mrs. Grabel.

On a Saturday in early January when the sunshine heralded only another frigid morning, Myka was hovering over the stove, rubbing her hands together in the warmth and urging the water for coffee to boil, when someone knocked at the kitchen door. It wouldn't be Mrs. Grabel, she had been paid the day before. The knocking became louder, and Myka had hardly touched the doorknob when the door flew open, and Claudia hurried into the kitchen, Liesl close behind her. Claudia was nearly swallowed by a large, heavy coat that looked like one her hands might wear when they were out with the cattle and which smelled of cattle a little as well, but she clapped her mittened hands enthusiastically when she saw the coffee pot, tracking melting snow across the floor as she approached the stove. Liesl remained by the door, carefully shaking the snow from her boots onto a rug. "Claudia," she said reproachfully.

Claudia looked down at her work boots and then apologetically at Myka. "Sorry."

Myka grinned, glad for the company and indifferent to the mess. "Sit down. Coffee should be ready soon."

After wiping her feet on the rug, Liesl didn't join Claudia at the table. Instead she helped Myka set out cups and saucers and when the water boiled, they stood in the middle of the kitchen in indecision as to which one of them was to sit down and which one was to make the coffee. Liesl slowly retreated and took the chair next to Claudia as Myka, a small, self-satisfied smile playing on her lips, poured the water through the filter and then brought the coffeepot to the table.

"You have to make Helena listen to reason," Claudia announced as soon as Myka sat down. "I've tried talking to her, but it hasn't done any good. I know she cares about you and what you think, maybe she'll listen to you."

"I don't think she's listening to anyone these days except Henry Tremaine," Myka said with an edge of resentment that she wished she had hidden better. But Claudia didn't seem to take any notice of the change in her tone, and Liesl simply drank her coffee, those startlingly blue eyes resting on Myka with a sympathy that didn't exclude a gleam of amusement, as if she not only knew who Mr. Tremaine was but also why he bothered Myka so.

"I don't know who this Tremaine is," Claudia said dismissively, "but Helena's taking the blame for something she didn't do. She didn't kill MacPherson, Myka." She finished explosively, slapping her hand on the table and sending coffee sloshing over the rim of her cup into the saucer.

"I know that." At Myka's quiet statement, both Claudia and Liesl looked at her in surprise. "There was someone else in the library besides Helena who could have killed MacPherson, but she didn't tell the sheriff."

"Because she thinks I killed him," Claudia said, reaching down into the open collar of her shirt and pulling out a leather cord, which hung from her neck and held a man's black onyx ring. Joshua's, Myka realized. "We found this near Hellinger's bunk. I went to MacPherson's ranch that night with the intention of killing him, but I didn't." She nervously ran the ring up and down the cord. "I was on the terrace, outside the library. I was going to sneak in, but then he was there, with a man, and they were arguing. I saw the man strike him, and he kept hitting him until MacPherson went down." Claudia shifted in the chair, her face troubled by the memory.

Myka leaned across the table to touch her hand. "You don't have to say anything more, Claudia." She wasn't sure why what must have happened next had happened, whether Claudia, driven by an equal mix of fascination and horror, had broken into the library to confirm that MacPherson was dead or, spurred by an instinctive desire to come to the aid of another, even if he was the one responsible for her brother's death, had jimmied the terrace doors to rush to his side. Helena must have found her there. Myka gripped her own cup so hard that she half-expected it to start cracking between her fingers. "She saw you, didn't she?"

Claudia nodded. "She came into the library. I don't know how long I had been beside his body, but she sent me home and told me not to tell anyone." Looking beseechingly at Myka, she said, "I thought she was going to tell the sheriff about the man I saw. I didn't know she was going to confess." Her voice sinking, she mumbled, "She didn't believe me. She thought I'd made it up." Then her eyes flashed, and she slapped the table again. "But he did it, Myka, that man I saw. I saw him do it. That's what I want you to do. I want you to publish my story of what happened in the _Journal_." More coffee sloshed into Claudia's saucer and then out of it, and Liesl got up from the table to take a dishcloth from the sink and wipe the puddle from the ancient oilcloth.

As she put the dishcloth back, Liesl's eyes met Myka's; they were unwontedly serious, and Myka minutely shook her head, enough for Liesl to notice but not Claudia, who was turning her cup around and around, anxiously waiting for Myka's response.

"Have you told Sheriff Lattimer about what you saw?" Myka prodded gently.

"Of course," Claudia snapped. Realizing how sharp she had sounded, she flushed. "Sorry, but I'm tired of everyone treating me like a child. I spoke to him when he was out at the ranch the last time, but he was too busy trying to sweet talk Liesl to listen to me. He thinks I'm just making it up to save Helena." Another, brighter flush swept across her face. "I didn't recognize him, that man. The bushes blocked my view, so I saw only bits of him and MacPherson. I never saw his face. The sheriff said if I couldn't tell him what the man looked like, he couldn't find him."

Feeling a spurt of anger at Pete's obstinacy, Myka wondered why he hadn't at least made the gesture of talking to MacPherson's staff about the man, even if he didn't give much credence to Claudia's story. As if she had divined the course of Myka's thoughts, Claudia said, "We hired one of the girls who had worked at MacPherson's house, and I asked the sheriff to talk to her if he didn't believe me, but she wasn't any help. She said too much had happened that night to remember everything. She remembered Helena showing up, but she couldn't remember if MacPherson had any other visitors. Once he heard that, the sheriff lost all interest, if he'd had any in the first place." Claudia made a sour mouth at her cup.

Of course Pete lost interest, he believes Helena's guilty, Myka thought with another surge of irritation. She looked closely at Claudia, the unevenly cropped ends of her hair curling against her neck, the chapped hands clenching and unclenching. Did she believe her? It was possible that Claudia had invented the other man. It was also possible that she had killed MacPherson herself, but Myka didn't believe either was true. Claudia had undoubtedly wanted to kill MacPherson, but it was one thing to fantasize about it, another thing to do it. As strange as it was to think of Claudia as sheltered, living as she did on the ranch with so few of the constraints that would encumber other young women, she flouted convention with the innocence of someone who didn't fully realize how imprisoning it could be. Perhaps she wasn't childlike enough to view the world as her playground, but she did view it as her laboratory, full of objects to be tested and people to help her to test them. It wasn't that the harshness of the world couldn't intrude upon her, it had, with Joshua's death, but Claudia wasn't the kind of person who repaid cruelty with cruelty. She would simply retreat into her experiments.

The more likely possibility was that she had invented the other visitor to save her friend. But if that was the case, then why was she admitting that she hadn't been able to see his face? Wouldn't she be describing every wrinkle and mole on it, the better to send Pete off on a wild goose chase? And knowing Claudia, Myka couldn't help but believe that if the man had been a complete fabrication, Claudia would have created a better story. Or at least a more theatrical one. The incompleteness of it and Claudia's frustration in the telling of it argued for its truth. Or so Myka believed, and she desperately wanted to believe.

"Without proof that the man was there at the time MacPherson was murdered, I can't publish your account of what happened, Claudia." As a mixture of frustration and disappointment settled on Claudia's face, Myka said, "But if we can find the proof, if we can find others who will confirm that the man was there and, better yet, identify him, you won't need me to publish anything. The sheriff will have to investigate him as a suspect. Surely we can find more of MacPherson's help, they can't have disappeared from the face of the earth."

Claudia brightened. "I know his housekeeper's at Sykes' ranch now, and some of the others may have gotten on at some of the farms and smaller ranches around." She started banging the table with her fist again. "If only we could get the sheriff on our side."

"I'll talk to him again," Myka said, as Liesl put her hand over Claudia's to still its thumping.

"So will I," Liesl said.

Although Liesl was still wearing her coat, Myka remembered, with more clarity than made her comfortable, the tightness of the too-small dresses she wore. Liesl could be an onslaught by doing no more than sitting close to Pete and letting her spun-gold hair and lush figure plead for her. Looking about her dingy kitchen for a distraction from images of Liesl "persuading" Pete, Myka acknowledged that her kitchen provided no distraction - no comfort, no real heat, and very little food. She had never been very good at making things "homey," but the rooms were even more stark and unlovely now that her father was gone.

Claudia cleared her throat. After a swift exchange of looks with Liesl, she said, "Actually we're here for another reason too. We heard about how poorly your father's been doing, and we wanted to know if we could help."

"He's visiting my sister now in Missouri. Leena thought it might help his lungs to go someplace warmer. I appreciate the thought, but I'm doing all right."

Liesl cast her eyes about the kitchen, and Myka tried to keep herself from squirming as she saw the room through Liesl's eyes and guessed that, to Liesl, it looked even worse than Myka had been acknowledging. Claudia showed no interest in the state of the kitchen, but she was shaking her head. "So you're running the _Journal_ all by yourself?"

"It's not some big city newspaper," Myka said nonchalantly. "My father and I published larger newspapers in larger places than Sweetwater."

"But your father had you. Who do you have?" Claudia looked at Liesl again, and Liesl nodded. "With the new girl, Marta's complaining there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and, frankly, it looks like you don't have any. Liesl can help out until your father comes back."

Confused, Myka said, "But that would be an impossible ride every day, back and forth between Sweetwater and the ranch."

Claudia grinned. "She wouldn't be traveling back and forth. She'd be staying here, Myka."

Myka crimsoned, although she had no idea why she was blushing so hard. Liesl's smile was a fainter reflection of Claudia's grin; she was unsure how Myka would respond to the suggestion. And Myka's instinctive response was to say "No" very, very firmly. She didn't need the help, she couldn't afford it, and even if she were to entertain the suggestion, there was no place to put Liesl. Just thinking about Liesl working in the kitchen and trying to help her out with the paper made the rooms feel that much smaller. Liesl would have to sleep on the sofa in the parlor, which would give her no privacy. The last thing Myka wanted to do was to stumble in on Liesl as she was undressing for bed. A flash of Liesl's bare shoulders emerging from a half-unbuttoned dress sent Myka into a spate of coughing. No. Absolutely not. She hurriedly tipped the coffeepot over her cup and took a few swallows of coffee.

Her eyes tearing a little and her voice scratchy, she managed to say, "That's a very generous offer, Claudia, and it's very kind of you even to consider it, Liesl, but I'm fine, really."

"Look, you're helping me to get Helena out of this mess she's in. It's only fair that I help you in return." Claudia shifted in her chair. "If it's about paying Liesl, Myka, she's still on the Donovan payroll. Think of it as my contribution. And as for Liesl being too kind, she's the one who suggested it."

This time it was Liesl's turn to blush, and she looked away from Myka. Why would Liesl – and then Myka understood. Though she had gotten the impression that Liesl wasn't particularly interested in Pete's courtship of her, perhaps Liesl had changed her mind, and it would be much more convenient to see Pete in Sweetwater than to have him travel all the way out to the Donovan ranch. It could be awkward for the three of them, Myka needing to occupy herself elsewhere while Pete carried on his wooing of Liesl in the next room . . . . Myka squeezed her eyes shut. It was ridiculous even thinking about how she would manage to give Pete and Liesl privacy because Liesl wouldn't be staying here.

She opened her mouth to issue a more firmly worded rejection of the offer, only to see that Liesl had gotten up and was opening cupboards while she had been imagining Pete holding Liesl's hand and looking, moonstruck, into her eyes. Her mouth remained open as she watched Liesl then investigate the stove and peer into the hated box of potatoes against the wall.

"Potatoes for meals, when you've taken them, yes?" While she might have phrased it as a question, the disapproval in Liesl's voice was clear. "I thought you had lost weight, you're all. . . skin and bones, that's what you say here, isn't it?" She straightened and wiped her hands on a towel she took from the counter. "The stove, it should be hotter than it is. It needs a good cleaning."

"But Mrs. Grabel comes over. . . ." Myka began, only to cut herself off as Liesl sniffed in derision.

"Mrs. Grabel, the little old woman in black?' Liesl looked at the stove. "It's a hard task to clean it, too much for her, maybe."

In the odd position of feeling she needed to defend Mrs. Grabel's housekeeping, Myka said weakly, "She comes over only a few days a week, and I'm afraid that I don't help her out as I should."

"That's why you need Liesl," Claudia said, pushing back from the table. "You have the _Journal_ to concentrate on. And I have some other ideas about how we can help Helena." She rubbed her hands enthusiastically. "You're in this with me, aren't you? Because it doesn't seem that Helena's willing to help herself."

"Yes, but really, I don't need . . . ."

For the first time, Claudia seemed to take in the kitchen and her eyes went to the box of wizened potatoes. "Yeah, you do. Our dogs eat better than you're eating right now, Myka, and Liesl and I haven't take our coats off the whole time we've been here. We can't afford for you to get sick. One of the hands will bring Liesl here tomorrow afternoon."

Flustered, Myka had only half-risen from the table by the time Claudia had opened the door and jumped over the step to the ground. "C'mon, Liesl," Myka heard her shouting. "We have to make a trip to the store."

Dear God, did they think she was so badly off that they were going to buy her food as well? Liesl, more carefully buttoning her coat and adjusting her scarf, came around the end of the table and stood next to her. They were almost of a height, Myka nervously noted, and though they weren't touching, Liesl was standing so close that the sympathy of her gaze felt like a touch. "You're thinking it is an. . . ." She frowned prettily as she searched for the word. "Imposition. But Claudia is very upset about Mrs. Wells. You are too. Maybe more than she is?" At the deliberate blankness of Myka's look, Liesl allowed herself a small smile. "Mrs. Wells, she thinks with her emotions. . . a proud woman like her often does. But Claudia doesn't understand that. I want to help her, and I want to help you, if you'll let me. For Claudia's sake, will you?"

How could a blue so deep seem so warm? Myka wanted to look away from those eyes but found herself nodding automatically. Some part of her, unmoved by the sculpted perfection of Liesl's face, the skin as unmarred and creamy as if it were June and not January, was telling her, no, shouting at her that she didn't mind wearing extra layers upon extra layers to keep from freezing, that she could suffer through meals consisting of potatoes fried, mashed, and baked for as long as she had to. Despite the persistence of her inner voice, Myka couldn't stop nodding, but she did throw out "And you'll be closer to Sheriff Lattimer this way, won't you?" as if it were a shield that, if it couldn't block, might at least divert the impact of that gaze.

The smile shrank, just a little. "Yes, Sheriff Lattimer will be closer." Then the smile warmed again. "And you'll be closer, for our talks about books."

Another image started to come to mind, of the two of them sitting together on the sofa, knees touching, with the light of the parlor lamp burnishing the gold of Liesl's hair, but Myka fiercely pushed it away. She was going to have to create a Liesl drawer.

The next day a wagon from the Donovan ranch came into town, and Liesl climbed down from the seat, taking two small travel bags from its back. As Myka stood, irresolute, in the kitchen, Liesl set her bags in the alcove, saying "You're sleeping in the bedroom until your father returns, yes?" As she went about changing bedding, airing the mattresses, Myka fumblingly tried to help her until Liesl, hands on hips, said, "You have things you must do for the _Journal_, yes?" Yes, she did. And Myka worked, preparing the bills she would take to the businesses that advertised in the _Journal_, writing the announcements of births and engagements and, then, more reluctantly, the obituaries of the area residents who had died. As it grew dark, Liesl lit the lamps, although Myka barely took notice, but when something that smelled appetizing wafted from the kitchen, she stopped and hungrily followed the aroma. Liesl, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, was stirring a soup or stew in a large pot. Myka could see the white of potatoes, which briefly made her stomach turn, but she saw chunks of carrots and turnips and, improbably, tomatoes as well. Liesl stopped stirring to grin at her. "Did you think the second bag had more clothing? I took some of the vegetables and meat Marta and I canned this past summer. They'll never finish it all out there, and I knew it would be more appreciated here."

That was the first day, and as the days followed each other, Myka quickly grew accustomed to Liesl's presence. She was up before Myka and at work cleaning or preparing the day's dinner before Myka had left the _Journal_'s office. The only true awkwardness came when Myka informed Mrs. Grabel that her services were no longer needed. "You've got that German girl now? Well, she's just looking for a husband, and once she finds him, she'll leave you high and dry. Don't come crying to me then for my help." And with that, Mrs. Grabel banged her door in Myka's face.

The awkwardness Myka had imagined developing when Pete came to visit Liesl never occurred. They tended to sit at the kitchen table rather than in the parlor, Liesl serving him –and Myka – the desserts she had managed to cobble together from flour, water, an egg or maybe milk, and whatever preserved fruit she could get her hands on. Frequently they would play cards and invite Myka to join them, and it was during one of those evenings that Myka broached the subject of talking to more of MacPherson's servants.

"Mrs. Wells' attorney has already been after me about them. He wants their names so he can question them." Pete grimaced as put a card on the discard pile. "Some of them went on the train that took MacPherson's body back east for burial, the rest have scattered like leaves."

Myka took Pete's discard and tucked it in with her remaining cards. "Does he know about the man Claudia saw? Did Helena tell him?"

Pete shrugged. "He said he wants to talk to everyone who was at the ranch the night MacPherson was killed." He snorted. "Good luck with that. A lot of the hands are gone, too. Only a few stayed, enough to take care of the cattle over the winter, but that's it. Most hightailed it for someplace warmer." He put down his cards and took another forkful of the pie Liesl had baked. "Miss Albrecht, your pies are almost as beautiful as you are."

To stop herself from rolling her eyes at the compliment, Myka intently studied her cards. It was a good pie, much better than anything she had served Pete when he had come calling on her. Strange to think it had been not that long ago that he would stop by of an evening and they would sit in the parlor, making halting conversation, as her father drank at the desk in the _Journal_'s office or impatiently waited for Pete to leave so he could go to the Spur. Her thoughts hadn't been full of Helena, not then, although they had occasionally lingered on the contrasts she had presented, the madam and the well bred woman who read Milton and Shakespeare, the practical businesswoman and the willing partner in Claudia's efforts to pilot submarines and send rockets into space. But Myka had known, all the same, that Pete's courtship wouldn't progress much beyond the long silences and bashful looks in the parlor. If it had been possible for Helena to court her as a man would – she smiled to herself at the absurdity of the thought – it wouldn't have been long before she would have been waiting at the door to go out with Helena in her carriage to "stargaze" on the prairie. And unlike those evenings when her stargazing with Sam had been spent pushing his hands away from her skirt, she would have been encouraging Helena's hands to roam everywhere. Myka blinked, trying to focus on the game. She shouldn't have let her thoughts drift like that.

" . . .she just doesn't know how not to jump into hot water," Pete was saying. "People are whispering that Henry Tremaine is at her house far more than he should be, and Grayson at the hotel has been telling me that sometimes he doesn't come in until dawn. You'd think -"

The pounding of Myka's heart drowned out the rest of his words. He was talking about Helena, Helena and Mr. Tremaine. She could see the sides of the Helena drawer bowing out with the pressure of its contents, and she wasn't sure what was bubbling up in her throat, a sob or a laugh or a roar of anger. She heard Liesl saying coolly, firmly, "You're repeating gossip, Sheriff Lattimer, about a woman who's not here to defend herself."

Pete reddened and glanced apologetically at Myka. "I wasn't thinking about how it sounded. It's just that you're her friend, Miss Bering, and I thought you should know, so you could maybe talk some sense into her."

"She doesn't listen to me anymore, Pete. I'm not sure that she ever did." Myka looked at the cards in her hand and, with a tiny laugh that was almost as painful to hear as it was to force it out of her mouth, she said, "I should quit now before my hand gets any worse." She carefully placed her cards, face down, on the table, and just as carefully, because she shouldn't have called him Pete, not in front of others, especially not Liesl, she said, "Good night, Sheriff Lattimer."

In her bedroom, she still thought of it as her father's bedroom, she undressed and crawled beneath the covers. She needed to do something to occupy her mind, although the Helena drawer had quieted, mercifully. Taking a book from the pile on her nightstand, she started reading from where she had left off, but it didn't matter, it was a Scott romance, so she already knew how it ended. She wasn't sure how long she had read, long past when Pete had left since she had heard the kitchen door open and close hours ago; the lamp was guttering, but she still wasn't tired enough to sleep. When she heard the knock at her door, she was almost grateful for the interruption. She didn't want to talk to Liesl, but she liked being alone with Sir Walter Scott even less.

Liesl was dressed for bed, her hair down but braided, the nightgown an old shift of blue flannel. "I could hear you thinking about her. It was very loud."

Myka smiled faintly. "I hope the way I left didn't ruin the rest of your evening with the sheriff."

Liesl said, "He ate another piece of pie, and he won our card game. I think the sheriff had a good evening." She slowly entered the room, and even more slowly sat down at the foot of Myka's bed. "He means well, and I think he is troubled by Mrs. Wells' behavior on your account, but he doesn't know how to say it." She took a deep breath. "He doesn't understand how close you and Mrs. Wells were. . . are. Not many men would."

It probably wasn't appropriate that Liesl was sitting on her bed. They weren't sisters or childhood friends. It suggested an intimacy that Myka wasn't sure she wanted between the two of them, but she was too weary right now to reassert a distance. "It's none of my business whom Helena chooses to spend time with, and Helena was. . . acquainted with Mr. Tremaine when she lived in New York."

"They were lovers." Liesl had cocked her head in gentle skepticism. "No woman would just be 'acquainted' with a man like that."

"And you know that from being raised on a Bavarian farm?" Myka shot back sarcastically and then flushed with shame at her rudeness.

"I didn't always live on a farm," Liesl said, unperturbed. "I knew men like Mr. Tremaine, perhaps not as rich or powerful, but important men, or men who thought they were important. I also knew women like Mrs. Wells. I learned that it was best not to get between them." She patted Myka's leg and rose from the bed. "I'll let you get to sleep, but should you ever want to talk about Mrs. Wells, I'll always be ready to listen."

"There's nothing to talk about," Myka maintained stubbornly. "We were close once, and now we're not. That can happen between friends."

Again, Liesl inclined her head in doubt, but this time she only smiled.

...

It was on a cloudy day in late January when Myka received the letter. The stationery was heavy, linen-like, and the handwriting looked familiar, although Myka couldn't think of anyone she knew who could afford to write letters on paper of this quality. She took a knife from a cupboard drawer and cut open the envelope as Liesl looked curiously at her from the kitchen table, where she was using the greater space it afforded her to roll out dough for a pie.

As she read it, she could hear the writer's voice, lighter, more excitable than her mother's, but just as round and smooth, a smaller, greener apple but still an apple. Christina. The letter spoke of her surprise to receive the news about her Aunt Helena, but such a wonderful woman as Miss Bering had described should have all her friends and family rally in support of her. Her father had decided to travel to America, to Dakota Territory (what a wonderfully odd name!), to try to get to the bottom of whatever troubles his sister had found herself in, and he had promised to write to her and Mummy and Grandmother every day. But, Christina admitted, she must be more like her aunt than she knew, because she had decided to accompany him with or without his permission. It had taken all of her allowance and more (she had even had to pawn several things she owned to raise the funds she needed), but she had succeeded in paying for the train ticket, the bribes necessary to keep the servants both silent and willing to do her bidding, and the hackney cab to the ship. Even though the gentlemen at the train station had threatened to send her home because surely no family of quality would allow their daughter to travel unescorted, she had learned that a firm voice and a haughty demeanor could nip objections in the bud. She had stowed herself away in a wardrobe in her father's stateroom, and imagine his surprise when he discovered her there. He had thought she was leaving to spend a week at Jemima Newcastle's home outside London! It had been a grand plan, one that Aunt Helena might have thought of herself, and even her father had said so, once he had calmed down enough to speak to her.

There was more, and she would read it, but Myka turned the envelope over to look at the postmark. The letter had been sent from New York a week ago.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I knew how I would start this story, and I know how I'll end it, it's the middle stuff that's in flux. There's more than one direction that I can go with some of the things that are said/thought/happen in the chapter, which is all a way of saying that the next chapter might be posted later than normal (I try to post a chapter every couple of weeks) because I'm expecting some false starts and dead ends. For the folks who also read Reset, I'm hoping I can crank something out next weekend, but I have a long way to go in that chapter yet.**

Henry had insisted upon staying in Sweetwater for Christmas, although Helena urged him to return to New York to spend the holidays with his family. He had laughed without humor at the suggestion, complaining that his two oldest sons were ingrates while his youngest (his favorite, Helena had long known) wasn't in the country, having taken up residence in Paris, living in "some rat-infested attic, no doubt thinking that makes him an artist." Henry looked so comically disgruntled then, his displeasure unsuccessfully hiding a pride that one of his children was strong enough to defy him that Helena almost hugged him, as she would have in the past when he growled and fussed, seeking comfort but unwilling to ask for it. But she couldn't now, it would suggest more than she had to give. Seeing the disappointment flicker across his face, because he remembered, too, how she used to kiss and tease him into a better mood, she impulsively invited him to join her and Leena for Christmas dinner, which would come as news to Leena, that they were having a Christmas dinner. Their previous Christmases in Sweetwater they had spent simply, reading in the library and gorging on the cookies and other treats that Leena had baked. But it was good, she told herself, to depart from the usual because nothing would be as it was before, regardless of any miracles that Malachi Ross might work.

He had accepted the invitation before she had finished speaking, and he strode about the library, clucking over the absence of a tree and holly and mistletoe, winking at Helena when he said the last. Within a few days there was a towering spruce in a corner, and she and Leena and Henry spent one evening stringing popcorn and cranberries and garlanding the tree. She had refused Henry's suggestion of candles, gesturing at the books crowding the walls and claiming that she had no desire to add to her problems by ending up homeless. Henry had only wagged his head. It was late, and Leena had already gone to bed, leaving the two of them to their eggnog and brandy. Helena was the only one drinking eggnog, Henry having declared that since brandy was the best thing about eggnog, he would stick to the brandy. He was gazing at the tree from his chair, and Helena noticed that his expression was growing gloomier.

"It's not too late to take the train to New York," she said. "You might not make it in time for Christmas but, barring bad weather, you should be there the next day."

He drank down the rest of his brandy and pushed himself to his feet to pour another glass. She and Henry and Mr. Ross had long since finished the bottle of brandy that had been collecting dust on the credenza when the two men had first arrived in Sweetwater. What they drank now was brandy that Henry had delivered from New York. It was very good, she had to admit, but she was drinking too much of it. "Yes, to endure an afternoon of Benjamin's complaints at the dinner table as his wife simpers at me. I don't give him enough responsibility, I promote lesser men above him, he says." Henry batted at the air in frustration. "Then to suffer through an evening with William and his wife, who glares as if she would like nothing better than to stick the carving knife in me. He complains that I work him too hard." Henry settled back in his chair, his cheeks ballooning as he released a contemptuous puff of air.

"I thought you enjoyed your grandchildren, at least," Helena said.

"Girls all. I can't very well leave what I've built to them." Unfazed by Helena's own dagger-like glare, he stretched out his legs, casually crossing them at the ankle. "You're one in a million women, Helena, I've told you that before." He swirled the brandy in his glass. "I've wished more than once that we had had a child." Seeing her brows climb in surprise, he said, "You think I wouldn't have acknowledged him? He might not have been able to carry my name, but he would've been my son in all other respects. Your beauty and my head for business." His wistful smile became a grin as he received another one of her outraged looks. "Your beauty and our heads for business. Is that better?"

"You're forgetting that this imaginary child of ours could as easily be a girl," she said, unmollified.

"So long as she looks just like you," he gallantly offered in apology.

Then Helena was the one to become gloomy. "The only positive note I can find in this mess is that my daughter, my family, will likely never know. A trial of a whore accused of murder in Dakota Territory isn't the kind of news to leap across oceans."

Henry squinted at her in disbelief. "You can't be so naïve as to believe that news of this won't travel to England. Once I learned your real name was Wells, it wasn't hard to figure out who you are. If you think the papers in New York won't trace you back to Arthur Wells and his factories, you're sadly mistaken."

"You and Mr. Ross keep warning me about the New York papers and how they'll tear my reputation, such as it is, to shreds, but I have yet to see mention of MacPherson's death or my role in it in any of them." A moment ago the coating that the eggnog left on her tongue and the inside of her mouth had been bearable, but now she couldn't stand it, and she put her eggnog down in favor of the bottle of brandy and poured too much of it in a glass, hoping to rinse the film away.

"That's about to change," Henry said, frowning at the amount of brandy in Helena's glass. "The latest rumor in New York is that Oskar Rasmussen was one of MacPherson's backers, and if that's true, he'll go into league with the devil himself to get his due. God knows he has no love for me. We last tangled over some foundries we both wanted. It was a vicious fight, but I won them." He allowed himself a fleeting smugness before his expression grew serious. "He won't forget that."

Helena had spent many evenings trying to massage the tension out of those massive shoulders and devising other distractions to take Henry's mind off the latest perfidy of his most ruthless competitor. Doubtless he would welcome the opportunity to employ the same distractions to ease her mind, but to her Rasmussen was simply a name, occasionally attached to a bald, egg-shaped man in grainy photographs in the society columns. No matter what he might order written about her, it would be true in spirit if not in fact. She had abandoned her child, she had whored for more than one panderer, and if she hadn't murdered MacPherson, her innocence was more the product of someone else committing the deed before she could than a refusal to stain her soul. She had committed so many other sins, after all. The horror wouldn't be seeing her history, under a lurid headline and next to a hastily drawn, equally lurid sketch of her, but knowing that Christina could be reading it. Imagining the revulsion on her face was as painful as seeing the distance in Myka's eyes when they had stood just inches from each other, and she had tried to explain, as snow filled her shoes, why she had given the _Journal_ away.

"Perhaps by the time my family sits down to read about what has become of me, I'll be imprisoned, or in my grave." Her smile was wry. "I'm not sure which they would prefer."

"Don't talk like that, not in my hearing," Henry scolded her. "Some of Ross's young pups are coming out with him when he comes back in the new year. There are others who wanted MacPherson dead, and they'll find them." He took his watch from his vest and scowled at its face. "Past midnight. It wouldn't do, I suppose, for the town to think I'm here at all hours."

"You are here at all hours," Helena said chidingly, but her look at him was warm. "And I'm sure the town already thinks the worst of us."

"There's a way to remedy that, you know." He tone was light, jesting, but he couldn't meet her eyes.

She knew what he was suggesting, and she feared she might choke on her brandy. Either that or cry. He had a soft heart, even a romantic one, for a man who was said to have molten ore for blood and a bank vault for a heart. She wouldn't pretend not to know what he meant, she could at least do him that honor. "You've compromised yourself by coming to my aid. I can't, I won't let you further blight your reputation or your family's interests."

He shrugged. "I'll let it go for now, but this won't be the last time I mention it." As she led him from the library, he touched her hand, and she slowed. "It's hard for me to believe that you've lived as chaste as a vestal virgin out here." Those hooded eyes regarded her shrewdly, skeptically. "You've said that you and MacPherson weren't lovers, and I believe you, but was there no one who –"

She crooked an eyebrow at him. "You've seen the male population of Sweetwater. Does chastity seem so unbelievable an alternative?" Her voice becoming softer, she said, "There were too many men for too many years. I was in no hurry to find a man."

She hadn't moved her hand away from his, and he stepped in closer to her, his hand moving up to cup her elbow. "It wasn't business between us, and you were happy. You're telling me that if some handsome fellow rode into town on horseback, you'd send him away? You must be lonely here." His jaw skewed to the side, as if he was beginning to grind his molars, and his eyes roamed her face possessively. "Ross said you were distraught when that Miss Bering left. I've not met her father, perhaps he's some prince among men."

"Hardly," Helena said, pulling gently but unmistakably away. "He's a drunk, an evil-tempered one at that, and how he fathered someone like Miss Bering, I'll never know."

"How can I not try to rescue you from a life where you count among your friends your housekeeper and a stiff-necked spinster?" He seemed to take little account of her rebuff, more than likely because he was confident she wouldn't keep him at arms-length forever. "You deserve better than this shanty town. When Ross gets these charges dismissed, you'll have no excuse not to leave, Helena."

Except one. Some part of her still clung to the fantastical idea that she and Myka might, just possibly, find their way to each other again, although the dismissiveness of Myka's spin away from her as she had shifted from foot to foot, snow melting on and between her toes, argued against it. It had felt less like a slap in the face than it had the slamming of a door. A slap in the face could always be a prelude to something more interesting; there was an air of finality about a slammed door. But this was what she wanted, wasn't it? Myka outside MacPherson's library while she remained inside. And if Myka grew accustomed to being on the outside, she couldn't very well complain when Myka insisted on keeping her distance.

As she watched Henry button his coat and wrap a scarf around his neck, she wondered how many times she could ignore the yearning in his eyes and scoff at his determined optimism that Mr. Ross would free her before a bleakness would descend over his face and she would see that broad back she used, playfully, to pummel turned away from her. It had seemed so clear to her when she had seen Claudia crouched beside MacPherson's body. There had been no need to weigh her life, her freedom against Claudia's. She didn't regret her decision, but it would have been much easier if the sheriff had taken her straight to Pierre and if the judge, who had listened to Malachi Ross's ridiculous explanation of her confession (for whatever reason, probably some combination of the threat implicit in the name Henry Tremaine and the promise implicit in it as well), hadn't listened to him at all. It could have been done by now, finished. Instead she was watching Leena and Myka and Claudia and, now, Henry struggle to save her, flail against her obdurateness, and she couldn't bring herself to help them.

It wasn't so much that she feared fighting for her innocence would put Claudia or some unwitting soul at risk, although she still shivered when she remembered Mr. Ross talking about how "handy" servants were when it came to throwing suspicion onto someone else. The ease with which Sweetwater seemed to be accepting the presumption that she had killed MacPherson, despite the fact that her confession had never been made public (surprisingly, the _Journal_ had never reported it), was calming her anxieties that Claudia could become a suspect, even if the truth about her brother's death were revealed. Moreover, what she had so caustically told Claudia about the foolishness of saying anything about that evening was more true now than it had been even then. It would cast only a darker shadow on her, not bring her innocence to light. She wasn't afraid to fight for her innocence, but she didn't see the point to it. Malachi Ross might be able to persuade a jury to find her not guilty, but she wasn't innocent. The wall she had erected between her and those she loved hadn't weakened when she was released on bail, when Mr. Ross was hired to defend her, it had grown only stronger. Since the night MacPherson was killed, she had never been able to stop hearing her mother's voice, the contempt in it, not just for her foolishness but for her. The woman she had become was lifetimes away from the girl she had been, that silly, innocent girl who had thought that the increasing thickness of her waist and the nausea she felt every morning came from eating too many sweets. That girl would never have imagined, not even in the worst of her nightmares, that she would revisit those disappointing fumblings with Richard with other men, many men, for money. That girl would never have constructed a plan to destroy the woman who had employed her. Each man, each lie, each manipulation was a brick mortared into the wall. Even Myka, who had stubbornly pounded against that wall until part of it crumbled, what had she done for Myka other than to force her to choose between parent and lover, and they were rarely happy consequences that came from those choices. Helena didn't need the law to hang and bury her because she was already immured.

But Henry must not have heard the despairing storm of thoughts in her head because he was at her door on Christmas Day, bearing gifts of wine (and brandy), chocolates, tea, coffee, the newest books, and even something for Leena, a new apron, for which she thanked him with a pained smile. Helena had presided over the table in the dining room, although it was only the two of them (Leena shaking her head when Helena had insisted earlier that morning that she join them and saying she much preferred the warm comfort of the kitchen), and she had toyed with the food on her plate (icy by the time she would lift a bite from plate to mouth), her thoughts wandering more than once to Myka and how she was spending the day. That night, as she had paced the floor of her bedroom, as she often did now that sleep eluded her so easily, she saw movement outside her window, a shadow separating itself from the others, and she hadn't bothered to shrug on a robe or shove her feet into slippers before flinging herself downstairs. She had stumbled into walls as she blundered into the kitchen and then barked her legs on chairs as she hurried to the door. Opening it, she saw nothing, except the bunched outline of the trees that marked the boundaries of her property and a white expanse of snow. Not even a rabbit was moving across the yard. She was about to close the door when she spied a small box. She took it with her to her bedroom, and after lighting the lamp next to her bed, she took out a carved horse. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, but the craftsman had been sufficiently skilled to carve the flared nostrils, the line and curve of muscle. He had painted it carefully as well, a reddish brown for its coat and black for its mane and tail. The head and neck were arched, as if the horse wasn't at all happy to be captured in wood, as if it wanted to be freed to run, and as she rubbed its neck and chest, she wondered if that was how Myka saw her, trapped, albeit in a prison of her own making.

In the following days, she told herself that she should walk to the _Journal_'s office and thank her because she knew Myka had given her the horse, had seen the resemblance to Dantes, but each day would end with her never having left the house. She helped Leena with the housework, which, as she would sometimes catch Leena redoing some task, she understood was a mixed benefit at best, and when Mr. Ross returned, she was back in the library with him and Henry going over some aspect of her defense. Sometimes one or more of the "young pups," as Henry had called them, came with Mr. Ross, and she realized they were being sent out in their too-thin overcoats and insubstantial shoes to talk with anyone who ever worked for or associated with MacPherson, but both Mr. Ross and Henry seemed unconcerned with the men's safety, treating them, in fact, like pups, as if the loss of one or two of them would hardly be noticed. Helena smilingly encouraged the men, boys really, to purchase stouter coats and boots, but they would only nod, their eyes fastened adoringly on Mr. Ross, and she realized that these law students and clerks would gladly give up fingers and toes to frostbite to win the approval of Malachi Ross.

One morning Henry and Mr. Ross arrived, pupless, and as Helena ushered them into the library where coffee and yesterday's fug from their cigars awaited them, Mr. Ross took the newspapers from under his arm and slapped them down on the desk. "If you didn't believe me when I said the New York papers would eviscerate you like a lamb brought to a slaughterhouse, please take a look."

Helena, suppressing an exasperated sigh, took the newspaper on top of the small pile, the _Herald_. She bypassed the front page, turning pages to the back of the paper before Mr. Ross discreetly coughed and said, "Front page, bottom right." She saw the article then, "Former Madam Accused of Murder," and sat down behind the desk to read it. She was tempted to laugh at the multitude of errors; for one thing, the writer seemed to confuse her with Elizabeth Sloan, calling her "one of the most infamous madams in the city's history," which seemed an extravagant description considering how colorless Mrs. Sloan had been. But the impulse to laugh died away when she read a quote from Alan Lawrence: "Helena Wells had been brought up with all the graces and luxuries that the Wells fortune could buy. To think that she has fallen so low as to murder one of her clients, a humble rancher. It is a terrible misfortune for the Wells family."

She rattled the paper in fury. "Where on earth did they find Alan Lawrence? He would say anything about anyone for the price of a drink or a bet on a horse."

"Yes, precisely," Mr. Ross said dryly, handing her the _New York World_. "Second page."

More of the same, except she had been demoted from madam to streetwalker. At least there was no quote from Alan Lawrence, and there didn't appear to be a link made between her and the Wells family. "This one seems temperate by comparison," she said with a shrug.

"You don't mind being called a 'heartless she-devil who preys upon the hearts and wallets of men wherever she goes?'" Mr. Ross asked, the grandfatherly blue eyes looking especially ungrandfatherly.

"It has a certain dramatic flair to it." Looking over the top of the paper at Henry, she said, "Do you think it's an accurate summation of me? I would quibble with 'heartless' but 'she-devil' might be apt."

"Here's Rasmussen's _Clarion_. Tell me if you feel as amused." Mr. Ross gave her the last of the papers.

She didn't have to search for the article. The front page headline screamed "English Heiress Turned Killer" and underneath it wasn't a sketch but an actual photograph, taken from when she had lived in New York with Henry, given the style and expensive cut of her dress. Her head was turned slightly to the side as if she had been photographed talking to someone, almost certainly Henry, but he had been cropped from the picture. Even though her face wasn't turned toward the camera, anyone who knew her would recognize her. Not about to let on to Mr. Ross how much seeing the photograph had unsettled her, she flattened the paper on her desk as if to give it her full attention. And she did give it her full attention because the account was devastating, inaccurate in many places but no less devastating because of it. The article provided a history of the Wells family and their wealth, naming her grandparents, parents, brother, and niece. Somehow Rasmussen had found friends of the family or, more likely, former servants willing to contribute their knowledge of the family and of a young, well brought-up Helena Wells. The article even referred to the "young Helena's love of touring the family's factories with her grandfather." She read about the "sudden illness" that had forced her parents to have her "convalesce with distant family for approximately nine months whereupon she returned to London yet returned neither to family nor friends." The article mentioned "certain acquaintances of Miss Wells at the time who remarked upon the infant in her care." It ended, she realized dully, with the Helena of its account just then embarking upon a ship that would take her to Europe. She wondered momentarily why the article would have stopped before it came to the truly salacious parts of her story, but then she saw in smaller print, "Part one of a five-part article."

"Now do you understand what we're up against?" Mr. Ross took a splinter of wood from the fireplace and lit one of his panatellas.

"I've already got my man in Pierre working on a counterstrike," Henry said.

"We need more than your man in Pierre. We need rebuttals in the Minneapolis papers, the Chicago papers, as well as the ones in New York, Boston, and Washington. It's not just Mrs. Wells we're protecting now, it's you as well, Tremaine. By the time he gets done savaging her, he'll have made you look twelve times a fool."

Henry waved his arms in the air, as if he were brushing a swarm of gnats from him. "Rasmussen can say what he likes about me, but I've bested him too many times for anyone to take his shouting seriously."

Helena eyed the bottle of brandy longingly, then looked away. "But you're out here, not attending to business, not bending the government your way. What he'll succeed in doing is making you look inattentive, Henry. He'll make you look like a doddering old man who's not fit to manage his empire."

Henry angrily pushed himself up from his chair. "I will travel to New York and to Washington when I need to, otherwise I am here until the trial ends. I don't need Oskar Rasmussen and certainly not the two of you to tell me how to run my businesses." He limped out of the library and a few seconds later the front door was shut with a resounding thud.

Mr. Ross puffed on his panatella, unconcerned at Henry's departure. "He'll be back soon enough, he just needs to calm himself down." He drew a chair in front of the desk. "That's not the only reason he's angry." Hooking one leg across the other, Mr. Ross took a long draw on his panatella and issued the stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "I don't wish to be indelicate, but there's been considerable gossip in this town about how much time you and Henry have been spending together. His comings and goings have been noticed, particularly how late in the evening he's been returning to the hotel. It has to stop, Mrs. Wells."

"There's nothing to stop, Mr. Ross. Henry and I are not lovers." Helena stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers.

"It doesn't matter whether you are. It matters that the town thinks you are. Henry can visit you in my company or in the company of my employees, but not alone, and we will no longer be working on your case in the evenings, Mrs. Wells." The head tilted down, and his eyes, hard and implacable, easily met her stare and held it. "When I talked to him about this earlier today, he said that the only thing preventing him from marrying you in that," Mr. Ross gestured vaguely in the direction of the church, "that godforsaken little chapel is you. I advise you to keep refusing his offers."

"He hasn't actually asked me to marry him," Helena said coolly. "While I appreciate your concern about the conduct of my personal affairs and how it might affect my. . .situation, quite frankly, what Henry and I are to one another is not your business, and if he ever asks me to marry him, I very well may accept his proposal, with or without your approval." She wouldn't, at least she hoped that she would never reach that point of desperation or loneliness to hurt Henry so by marrying him, but she couldn't let Mr. Ross further circumscribe her behavior. She was already suffocating in her little tomb, she wouldn't let him sit on the coffin lid.

"You would do well to remember that Henry is my client, not you. The harm you would cause his reputation by marrying him would be irreparable. The day you accept his proposal is the day, Mrs. Wells, that I will do my utmost to see you sent to prison for the rest of your life. Do we understand one another?" He smiled, and Helena wanted to hug her chest against the frigid blast of it.

She also wanted to lunge at him across the desk and smash his panatella against his teeth. In place of that, she wanted to issue some threat of her own, as weak and as pitiful as it would sound. Instead she smiled a smile as wintry as his. "Perfectly."

It was that night that she began her "walks," as she came to call them. She couldn't attribute it all to a desire to metaphorically thumb her nose at Malachi Ross, although that was certainly a part of it. But she was beginning to hate her home, the chairs and books and fireplaces she had yearned to see only weeks ago seemed worn or dirty or both. The creaking of the floorboards and stairs had lost its eccentric charm and served only to annoy her. Winter had always been hard to endure in Dakota Territory, but this year it was particularly horrible; she had never before felt quite so closed in. Perhaps that was because she had never let herself be so physically closed in. Other than a few trips to the general store and weekly attendance at the church, she hadn't left her home. Although she had always been an object of the town's prurience as well as its disapproval, she hadn't felt the stares and hard looks and, almost as bad, the avidly curious side glances so keenly. As she had paced around her bedroom, the night proving itself to be, like so many others, a sleepless one, she kept looking out the windows, hoping she would see, as she had Christmas night, a shadow detach itself from the trees and cross the yard. But she wouldn't, no matter how much she wished and hoped. Not asking herself why, she began to put on her stockings and skirts and dress. Tiptoeing downstairs to minimize the creaking, she buttoned herself into a coat and laced up a pair of boots. Bundled enough to withstand the cold for a little while, she ventured out the kitchen door, turning away from the main street and picking her way beneath the trees until all she saw was prairie in front of her. She reversed her direction to return to the town, but she stayed away from Sweetwater's cluster of buildings, keeping to the back of them, and it occurred to her as she stumbled occasionally over icy hillocks and felt the air sting her ears that this must be a path similar to the one Myka had taken to her house every night, and she had no sooner made the connection than her feet were pointing in the direction of the _Journal_, and although Helena had had no conscious intention of making her way there, she walked within a few feet of it. She stood in back of the kitchen, and she imagined pushing open the door and sneaking into Myka's alcove. Would Myka greet her by throwing the bed covers to one side and inviting her to lay down or by flinging shoes at her head to chase her from the room? She thought the shoe-flinging would have the edge, and she quietly drifted away from the building, startling a dog or two into muffled, querulous barking as she wound past darkened houses toward her own darkened house at the other end.

She didn't go out every night, but many nights she did, and while she didn't always end up at the _Journal_, she frequently passed it on her walks. Strange, but she began to enjoy Sweetwater at night, the faint sounds of laughter issuing from the Spur, the squeak of her boots on the snow. The snow and the dark hid most of Sweetwater's detractions, maybe because primary among its detractions was its citizens and they, by and large, were asleep. She took pleasure in seeing the plume of her breath rise in the air, and when she walked out into the prairie, past the train station, she would stop, circle around, and look up at the stars, as thickly clustered as the sugar sprinkles on Leena's cookies. . . .or as tears on lashes. That last image wasn't peaceful, she decided, if truer to how she felt. She shook her head to rid her mind of it and closed her eyes, wishing as she always did when she looked up at the stars that Christina was happy and healthy and much loved. It was as close as she would ever come to praying.

…

She had grown to dread when Leena came back from the telegraph office with the mail. She had used to enjoy skimming through the papers from New York and Chicago and Minneapolis, selecting articles she thought the _Journal_ should reprint. But the _Clarion_ was continuing to publish its stories about her. It had finished its five-part article on her past, which had missed little in its exhumation of every seedy detail about her, from her travels about Europe with a coterie of disreputable lovers and friends to her years spent, first, with Lawrence and then with Mrs. Sloan. The only part of her life the paper had left relatively unexamined thus far was her time in Sweetwater, but she assumed it was only a matter of time before the _Clarion_ sent its reporters to the town. Its current obsession was with the "disappearance" of Mrs. Sloan and what Helena Wells' role in it may have been. Groaning, she pushed the paper away. She would be convicted of two murders in the public's mind before even going to trial. Underneath the papers was a letter, and Helena only listlessly picked it up. She had begun to get anonymous letters as well, short notes scrawled to the effect that a "dirty whore like you deserves to die." But this letter was on much better stationery than her anonymous letter-writers could afford, and her name wasn't misspelled as Helen Wells or Hellena Welles.

Her hand was shaking as she opened it, she would recognize those lazy looping Ls anywhere. Charles' handwriting was as languid and drawling as his speech. The enclosed note, however, was succinct to the point of crispness. He had received the impassioned plea of her good friend, Miss Bering, and he was coming to Dakota Territory to do what he could to prevent a miscarriage of justice. No estrangement between them, no matter how deep or bitter, could make him forget that she was his sister. Another piece of notepaper slipped to the table, and with fingers trembling even more violently, she picked it up, her vision blurring. Christina's message was short, like her father's, and stilted in the way that a girl's would be to a relative she had never met, but it expressed her horror that anyone could be so mistaken as to believe Aunt Helena could commit such a horrible crime and that she had been so distraught at the idea of never being able to meet her that her family had relented and allowed her to travel with her father to America.

Charles was coming here, and Christina, improbably, was with him. She couldn't imagine her parents or Matilda countenancing a fifteen year-old girl traveling halfway around the world to visit an aunt accused of murder, but Charles had always had his own way of doing things, and if he thought Christina should accompany him, then she would. Perhaps he had been moved by the possibility that Helena might never be able to see any of them again. Her heart squeezed itself so hard in her chest that she could barely breathe when she saw the postmark. New York, of course. He would see the papers, he would see the _Clarion_. Dear God, he would need only to see the headlines, and he and Christina would have tickets on the next ship back to England.

Leena had been chopping potatoes and carrots for another one of the countless stews she made during the winter, but her chopping slowed and then stopped, and Helena heard the scrape of a chair across the floor as Leena sat next to her. "What is it?" she asked softly.

Helena held out the envelope to her. "Did you see this?" As Leena nodded uncomprehendingly, Helena said, "It's from Charles. He's coming here." She tried to steady her voice, but she could hear it wavering as she asked, "Did you know that Myka wrote to him?" She wiped tears away with the back of her hand and tried, again, to steady her voice. "Did you put her up to it, as you did with Henry? You must tell me, Leena."

Leena passed her one of the napkins on the table, her dark eyes sympathetic but the line of her mouth firm, ready to console her and admonish her simultaneously, Helena thought as she dabbed at her nose. "Myka thought they should know. I didn't suggest that she contact them, but I didn't try to stop her."

"You also didn't bother to tell me," Helena said, blowing her nose vigorously.

"Other things seemed more pressing at the time, such as getting you out of jail," Leena said as admonishingly as Helena had expected. "Later, I wasn't sure what was worse, telling you and then seeing you on pins and needles as you waited for their response, if they responded, or what's happened now. I'm sorry, Helena."

"She should have told me," Helena whispered, eyes welling.

"When should she have told you, Helena? When the sheriff was throwing her out of the jail, when you were refusing to see her? You haven't stopped once at the _Journal _since you've been home." Leena took Helena's hands in her, chafing the icy fingers to warm them.

"She had no right." Her voice thick and heavy with the weight of the tears that she would not, absolutely would not, shed, Helena took her hands from Leena to rub her eyes. As the front page of the New York _Clarion_ swam back into focus, she grabbed the paper and brandished it in front of Leena's face. "This is what my daughter will see, this is how Christina gets to know me . . . as a gold digger, a prostitute, a murderer." Flinging the paper down, she jumped up, not sure where she was going but feeling an irresistible impulse to move, to do.

"Christina? She's coming with your brother?" Leena said disbelievingly as a smile began soften the line of her mouth. "Helena, don't lose sight of the fact that you'll get to see her, after all these years."

"If they haven't immediately turned around and taken the next ship back." Helena searched for a towel or rag with which to blow her nose again. "This is precisely why I didn't let them know. How do you tell your moth -." Helena stopped herself. Her mother would all too readily believe the worst of her. "Your parents," she amended, "your daughter, that you lived for years by taking money from men for a few moments of pleasure. Their pleasure. Silence is often kinder than the truth. I thought I could at least give them that." She had begun to pace, the energy driving her beginning to feel more familiar, like anger. "Do you know how often I dreamed of returning to England? I would come laden with gifts, expensive gifts, and I would be dressed in the latest fashions. I would be married, of course, although my husband would be conveniently away on business. My status, my virtue, would be unimpeachable. Even my mother would be impressed." She managed a weak, rueful chuckle. "Silly, I know. Built on lies. But the only way I would let myself imagine returning home was if I imagined myself as someone else." Helena felt a surge of anger pushing her, like a hand at her back. "They were never supposed to see me as I am. Never." She rushed down the hallway, hurriedly buttoning herself into her coat as Leena helplessly trailed her into the foyer.

Feeling that solemn face like another hand pushing her, but at her chest to hold her back, Helena said with a strained calmness intended to reassure, "I'm not going to lay waste to the _Journal_, but I need to know. . . I need to know . . . ." She hesitated, trying yet again to steady that wavering voice of hers. "I need to know why she did it."

"Helena," Leena sighed, "you already know why. Don't pretend to me that being able to see Christina again, under any circumstances, isn't something you've wanted. Myka's only done what you wouldn't do for yourself."

"It was my decision to make, not hers," Helena maintained stubbornly. "She did it without taking my wishes into account, without asking me—"

"Yes, she acted impulsively, thinking she knew best," Leena interrupted. "Does it sound familiar?"

Helena stiffened. "I will admit that going out to MacPherson's ranch as I did, to do what I did hurt her. But this, what's she done, she's hurt my father, my brother, and, were she not likely to be among those ready to drag me to the gallows, my mother." She allowed herself a bitter smile, and then it faded. "But most of all, she's hurt my daughter, and that I cannot tolerate."

Her lashes, wet with tears, froze together once she left the house, and she held her hand up against the sun and its blinding reflection off the snow. She remorselessly forced her feet through the snow's uneven crust, and though she tried to step in the footprints left by others, the snow still lapped over the tops of her boots, and, with a bird-like hopping gait, she managed to get to the street and then to the walk, where she ignored the men as they tipped their hats and boldly stared at her from beneath them and the women as they grimaced and held their skirts back a little too eagerly. She debated whether to knock at the _Journal_'s door or at the kitchen door in back. Despite leaving her home in high dudgeon, she was altogether cooler now, her nose running not from tears but from the cold and that part of her, which had always been susceptible to Leena's gentle and not-so-gentle remonstrances, admitting that she was excited, painfully so, to see her daughter. Even if Christina's face was twisted with revulsion upon meeting her, it would still be her daughter's face, with the eyes and nose and mouth and chin that she had last seen, in all their adorable pliancy, when Christina was still more baby than Christina. She could always gaze dreamily at Christina's hair or ears if she couldn't stand the censure in her daughter's eyes.

She knocked at the kitchen door, not entirely sure whether she would fall upon Myka with a howl of outrage or yet more tears, only to discover it being opened by Liesl. Seeing that blond lustrousness undimmed by winter was bad enough, but even more galling was that Liesl welcomed her into the kitchen with a proprietary air, as if she actually lived in the Berings' rooms. Then, as Helena registered the changes in the kitchen, she realized that Liesl was living with the Berings, with Myka rather, and Liesl's artless call to Myka – oh, and she so prettily excused herself, changing Myka to Miss Bering –to come to the kitchen – that sliced through Helena as if Liesl had drawn a knife against her skin. She had heard that Myka's father had gone to Kansas City to recuperate at his youngest daughter's home, but she hadn't known that Liesl had moved in to offer assistance. It didn't look temporary, Liesl's stay, there were new curtains at the kitchen windows, buttercream yellow instead of dingy white, the floor and walls had been recently scrubbed, and the kitchen smelled of apples and spices rather than of years of rancid grease. As Helena's eyes finished their canvassing of the kitchen, Myka came in from the _Journal_'s office, her dress liberally streaked with ink and her hair springing from its knot, and when she saw Helena she blushed. She blushed even more deeply when Liesl lightly touched her arm and murmured quietly, familiarly, "I'll bring you and Mrs. Wells some tea."

Helena knew that her face looked drawn and that her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she tilted her head and assumed a cool smile, as if this were her home and Myka and Liesl were the unexpected – and not terribly welcome - guests. She wouldn't let this Myka know, not this one who had her own servant girl . . . bed warmer, how rattled she was. She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, uninvited, looking up at Myka as though prepared to hear a long, abject explanation. "I had no idea you invited my family to attend the spectacle of my misfortunes. Poor Leena is scrambling to get the house ready for their arrival." Behind her, she could Liesl move from stove to cupboard and back again, the sound of a kettle being lifted, the hiss of water poured into cups. Across from her, Myka sat down, slumped into the chair rather, her fingers rubbing at her forehead.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have told you that I'd written them."

"I thought you might have first apologized for the letters themselves, but we can start with this," Helena said with sarcastic graciousness.

Liesl came to the table bearing two cups. She set them down and, with an impassive look at Helena, returned with the sugar bowl. "We don't happen to have any milk." She said it politely but with an almost imperceptible edge, as if the next thing she might say would be that if Helena needed milk in her tea she could milk the cow for it herself.

"I always find that milk ruins a good cup of tea," Helena said, her smile equally polite but displaying a similar hardness. "But then I find that milk ruins most things. It's so bland and thick and leaves such a bad taste in one's mouth."

Myka was on the verge of saying something, but Liesl interjected. "I'm going to the store." She took a coat from a hook. "We're running low on flour." Her glance flicked over Helena and landed with warmth on Myka. "And licorice," she added, smiling fondly at her.

Another blush crept up Myka's neck. She waited until the door closed behind Liesl to say, "Don't take your anger out on her. Liesl didn't write your family. And I won't apologize for that, Helena. Your family needed to know, and you weren't going to tell them. I won't apologize for things I've done to help you."

"It was a great help to wonder what my brother made of the stories in the _Herald_ and the _World_ and the _Clarion_. You've seen them, I'm sure." Helena's voice was rough with anger, and Myka, though she didn't flinch or shrink into herself, nodded unhappily.

"The _Journal_ won't reprint them. They're lies, Helena, and your brother will realize that."

"Not all lies, Myka. Surely you realize that," Helena said pointedly.

Yet another blush, a deeper, almost blistering red. "Is that all you think they'll see, the prostitute? The mistress? He's your brother, Helena. He attended your birthday parties and ate Christmas dinner with you. He teased you, and you hid his lessons."

"You have more confidence in Charles' generosity of spirit than I do."

"Because I know you. I see who you really are."

"And yet the first thing you called me, when you came to me the night of the grass fire, was a whore. Do you remember?" Helena looked into her cup. She hadn't drunk any of her tea. She wouldn't be able to force it down.

"I said that was how the town saw you, not how I saw you," Myka protested.

"Are you sure? You were so angry that night," Helena continued, almost musingly. "You said it as though you meant it, and it hurt to hear you say it. I never told you that, did I?" She was a silent for a moment. "I thought I had plumbed the depths of my humiliation when men would make me plead with them to take me, to hit me. . . or worse. And then I sat next to the sheriff on the wagon that Sunday morning, a common criminal, and I could feel the contempt radiating from him, that oaf of a sheriff who can barely tell his right hand from his left." Her voice didn't rise, but she could hear the emotion well in it. "But now you've put me in the position of begging my brother's and my daughter's forgiveness, for not being any better than what I am, and that is far worse than any shame I've experienced before."

Myka ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I'm sorry." Then she burst out, dropping her hands from her face, her pale green eyes glistening. "Goddammit, Helena, you make it so hard. I know, I know about Claudia, she told me that you saw her there. You were protecting her, but if you had just told someone, told me, all of this, this mess we have now, it wouldn't have happened. Do you think Pete would have believed Claudia was a murderer? Or the town? People think she's half-mad. She's a moony girl in their eyes, and no one would have taken her seriously. I know you know that."

Helena's eyes widened, not sure what surprised her more, Myka shouting or Myka swearing. "I couldn't risk it. And then later, it didn't matter. The evidence against me was, is, overwhelming." Distractedly she revolved her cup.

"Claudia said she saw the man who killed him." Myka leaned across the table and grabbed Helena's hand. "You knew about the man, didn't you?"

Helena looked at Myka's hand on hers and then slid her hand from underneath it. "I know that a man came to see MacPherson. I don't know whether he had anything to do with MacPherson's death."

Myka's hand twitched and as a new blush crawled up her face, she dropped her arm into her lap. "Did you at least tell Mr. Ross?"

"He and his minions have been searching for other suspects for weeks. They've been talking to all of MacPherson's staff who are still here. Half say a man came to visit MacPherson, half say I was the only one there. Of the ones who say a man was there, some say he was old, others say he was young. Fat, thin, tall, short. It's been too long since that night, and memories have grown faulty." Helena shrugged and rose from the table. "It doesn't matter."

Myka swung her head from side to side. "You're impossible," she whispered. More loudly, plaintively she said, "You're in a boat, and I'm on the shore, and you're drifting farther and farther away from me. Help me reach you, Helena."

I'm not in a boat, I'm drowning, and you'll never reach me in time, Helena thought. "You'll wait for me while I'm in prison? You'll write me letters? You should want more." Helena gave her a wry look. "Your milkmaid certainly wants more."

"My milkmaid?" Myka blinked in confusion. "You mean Liesl? .She . . . no. Claudia's letting her help out here while we work on trying to free you, Helena." She pronounced the last words with a growl of aggravation. She cocked her head, studying Helena through narrowed eyes. "You think you deserve this, don't you?" Rounding the table with a speed that surprised Helena, she stood in front of the door, blocking her exit. "Christina's no longer the baby you gave up, and you've long since paid for whatever sin you think you committed by doing that. Nothing you've done, ever, justifies your being punished for MacPherson's murder." Lifting her head and thrusting out her jaw, she met Helena's eyes squarely. "If you won't row back to shore, then I'll have to swim out to get you, and I warn you, I'm a pretty good swimmer." She took in a deep breath. "You say there's no future for us, but you still have a future, and I won't accept your giving up. So, no, Helena, I will not apologize for asking your family to show that they love you, and you can holler and stomp around and threaten that we'll never see each other again, but I am not sorry."

"You're the one who's impossible," Helena whispered. She touched Myka's face, lightly, delicately, like she might touch a single snowflake. Trembling, she pulled her mittens from the pockets of her coat. "If you'll move away from the door, please." She had tried to say it commandingly, but there was a quaver buried in it, and part of her wanted Myka not to move, not to let her leave. But Myka grudgingly slid away from the door, resignation and frustration chasing each other across her face. "Be careful, Myka, about swimming after me. I am, as you say, far from shore."

The wind was cold as it whipped at her hair, her coat, her skin. She decided to go around the building and return to the safer, easier footing of the wooden walk; head down against the wind, she nearly collided with Liesl, who was carrying a sack of items from the general store; tucked in, at the top, was a smaller paper bag, the kind used for penny candy. With the curtest of apologies, they stepped out of each other's way, but as Helena gingerly negotiated an icy patch where water had collected and frozen over, Liesl said quietly but loud enough for her to hear, "You don't deserve her."

Helena carefully turned to face her, boots making minute movements like the hands on a clock. She had no desire to finish her day by ending up in an ungraceful sprawl in front of Myka's milkmaid. "You don't deserve her," Liesl repeated. "You're not good for her."

Even amidst the soot-covered snow and the trash that clung to it, bits of coal, yellowed remnants of the _Journal_, the leavings of dogs, often the only creatures brave or stupid enough to wander the town on the most arctic of days, Liesl was lovely – and as unforgiving as the ice on which Helena was precariously balanced. The wind had raised two charming pink spots on her cheeks, but the eyes above them were the clear, pitiless blue of the January sky.

"On that, Miss Albrecht, we can agree." Helena offered her a weary smile.

Liesl ignored the smile. "Did you upset her?" She demanded as she shifted the sack in her arms, and Helena wondered if she was readying herself to launch a blow if the answer was yes.

"Yes, I did." But Liesl only twisted toward the back of the building, as if she hoped to spy Myka through the walls.

Turning to looking at Helena once more, she said, "She thinks about you all the time. She wouldn't want to admit it, but she does." Liesl's eyes were no longer pitiless, they were unhappily gazing at Helena, and Helena recognized the yearning in them because she felt it herself.

If she were a better person, she would encourage Liesl's hopes, tell her to cosset and comfort Myka. But she wasn't that person, and if she couldn't have Myka, wouldn't let herself have Myka, she'd be damned if she would gracefully leave the stage to Liesl. "I'm sure you're full of ideas about how you can make her think about something else, but you'll find her very stubborn." Helena's smile was no conciliatory gesture now; it was razor sharp.

"So am I," Liesl said grimly.

Leena wasn't home when Helena closed the kitchen door behind her and then sagged against it, the walk back to the house having grown longer and colder the farther she traveled from the _Journal_'s building and Myka's quixotic determination to save her. Because Leena wasn't home, Helena didn't have to answer the questions that would have been in those eyes. No, she hadn't shouted and stormed, not much, anyway, but maybe it would have been better had there been some screaming and flinging of the Berings' pitiful crockery. It might have broken the wall she had built, propelled her from the waters she was drowning in, shattered the mirror in which she was caught by the hideousness of her own reflection. Instead, she had left, feeling that the wall was thicker, the waters deeper, her reflection only the more revolting.

Because Leena wasn't home, Helena didn't have to see the disapproval in her eyes as she took the brandy bottle with her to bed. She would have taken Henry with her to bed as well if he hadn't left for Minneapolis earlier in the week, on a mission to find workmen and furnishings to transform the building he had bought, situated between what had been MacPherson's law office and the bank, into a private gentlemen's club, where he and Mr. Ross, the only two members thus far, could stay while they waited for a trial date to be set, Henry having decamped from the hotel as soon as he learned that its owner was among those townspeople gossiping about the amount of time he spent with her.

And because Leena still wasn't home by morning, Helena was the one who had to answer the pounding of the door. The rhythm of the hammering matched the throbbing in her head, and though she had no idea who had the temerity to attempt to remove her door from its hinges at the ungodly hour of – nine, the clock on the top of her bureau blandly announced – she wasn't going to hesitate to let loose a stream of invective, regardless of the visitor's age or sex. She cursed when she couldn't work her arms through the sleeves of her dressing gown and yet more loudly when she nearly fell over the bannister as she stumbled down the staircase. Yanking the door opened, she growled, "If you raise your bloody hand one more time, I will break every finger in it." She winced at the glare of the sun, staggering backward as it split her head in two.

The man standing before her was idly threading a pair of expensive leather gloves through his hands. "I see some things haven't changed, dear sister. You still greet the morning as sweetly as a fishwife."

"Charles?" She cupped her hand above her eyes and surveyed the tall, elegant figure in front of her. The dark, sleek hair, so like her own, and the eyes, "the Wells black buttons," their grandfather had called them, they shared them, too. The whiskers were fuller – Charles' mustache had resembled little more than a slash made by drawing charcoal the last time she had seen him – and there were lines creasing the skin on either side of his mouth that gave it a sour, snappish cast, but the sardonic drawl was exactly as she remembered it. "You look well," she said hesitantly.

He was conducting a similar survey of her. "And you look like a fishwife."

Self-consciously Helena tried to smooth the tangles of her hair. "I wasn't expecting you so soon."

"Obviously, or you wouldn't be smelling like a distillery. Dear God, Helena, you're going to make it so that I can never pick up a newspaper again."

A girl dressed in a long, fawn-colored coat, a muff held by a string around her neck gently bouncing against her chest, was coming around the corner of the house, clumsily leaping through the snow, as if she were playing a very laborious game of hopscotch. "It's awfully gloomy-looking inside the house, Papa. Perhaps she's in jail. Do you think she's been taken to jail?" She sounded both horrified and excited at the prospect. "Oh, hullo," she said, catching sight of Helena.

Her head was uncovered, and the black hair, like Charles', like her own, yet different in that it bounced, like the girl herself, was gleaming in the sunlight. The leaping increased in speed and clumsiness, and the words continued to tumble out but more breathlessly. "You must be Aunt Helena. I thought we should send someone to let you know that we had arrived, but Papa said no, that you might run away or hide if we gave you advance notice. But you wouldn't have done that, would you? Papa's so silly sometimes."

She was standing next to her father now, and Helena realized, dazedly, that she was looking up at her. Christina was tall, not as tall as Myka, but taller than she was. The eyes weren't the Wells black buttons, they were lighter, the color of caramel, and they were looking at her with open curiosity and something else Helena couldn't quite define. "I've wanted to meet you for the longest time. But that's not right, is it? We have met before, but when I was a little baby, so of course I don't remember."

"Yes, a very long time ago," Helena agreed faintly. She became dimly aware that Charles was leading them into the house, but she was in that squalid, rented room dressing a fussy Christina in a gown, dreading Charles' arrival and impatient for it at the same time. Almost fifteen years ago and yet no longer ago than yesterday. She was here and she was there, and she realized only then that it wasn't just a part of her that had remained in that room once Charles left with Christina in his arms, but the better part of her. The room wasn't ghostly, it was real and solid and ever present. She was the ghost, had been from the moment she crossed its threshold and childishly vowed that she would never return to England. She had given up her daughter years ago, and she had given her daughter up yesterday, and she would never completely stop giving her up, because that day had never ended for her. Yet that day didn't exist for Christina, she would never be able to recall it. Then Helena was being enfolded in someone's arms, and it was this tall Christina, with her caramel-colored eyes and dimple in her chin, who was hugging her and saying cheerfully, the words bouncing in the foyer, "It's so very good to see you again, Aunt Helena. Shall we start like that?"

Yes, they could start like that.


End file.
